Lutz Brügemann

Recent developments of multilayer mirror optics for laboratory x-ray instrumentation

In this paper we review various improvements that we made in the development of multilayer mirror optics for home-lab x-ray analytical equipment in recent years. For the detection of light elements using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, we developed a number of new multilayers with improved detection limits. In detail, we found that La/B4C multilayers improve the detection limit of boron by 29 % compared to the previous Mo/B4C multilayers. For the detection of carbon, TiO2/C multilayers improve the detection limit also by 29 % compared to the V/C multilayers previously used. For the detection of aluminum, WSi2/Si or Ta/Si multilayers can lead to detection limit improvements over the current W/Si multilayers of up to 60 % for samples on silicon wafers. For the use as beam-conditioning elements in x-ray diffractometry, curved optics coated with laterally d-spacing graded multilayers give rise to major improvements concerning usable x-ray intensity and beam quality. Recent developments lead to a high quality of these multilayer optics concerning beam intensity, divergence, beam uniformity and spectral purity. For example, x-ray reflectometry instruments equipped with such multilayer optics have dynamic ranges previously only available at synchrotron sources. Two-dimensional focusing multilayer optics are shown to become essential optical elements in protein crystallography and structural proteomics.