High-efficiency X-ray multilayer-coated blazed gratings with shifted boundaries

A new design for a high-efficiency multilayer-coated blazed X-ray grating with horizontal-shifted (non-conformal) boundary profiles is proposed. The investigation of the grating design is carried out using an integrated approach based on rigorous numerical calculations of light diffraction by gratings with realistic boundary profiles obtained from simulations of multilayer grating growth. By varying the incidence angle of the deposition flux, one can set the direction and magnitude of the boundary profile shifts over a wide range of values. It is shown that the diffraction efficiency of the blazed gratings with shifted boundary profiles may be substantially higher than the efficiency of gratings with conformal boundaries, which are, moreover, much more difficult to produce. High-efficiency gratings with shifted boundaries can be obtained when the deposition is mainly on the blaze facet with a high inclination of the deposition flux, as opposed to widely used near-normal deposition methods. The maximum absolute efficiency of a W/B4C 2500   mm − 1 grating with a blaze angle of 1.76 ° and an anti-blaze angle of 20 ° , working at a blaze wavelength of 1.3   nm and having shifted realistic boundary profiles, obtained using our integrated approach is 23.3%, while that of a grating with the ideal (triangular) boundary profile and the same shifts is 25.3%, and that of an ideal conformal profile is only 22.2%. The maximum absolute efficiency of 40.2% of a 2500   mm Cr/C grat...

Source: Journal of Synchrotron Radiation - July 18, 2019 Category: Physics Authors: Lubov, M. Goray, L. Tags: multilayer-coated diffraction grating soft X-ray range grating efficiency growth modeling multilayer-coated blazed X-ray grating thin-film growth simulations diffraction efficiency electromagnetic diffraction theory research papers Source Type: research