Development of multilayer Laue Lenses for soft X-ray radiation

Despite the improvements of fabrication techniques for Fresnel zone plates as diffractive optics for X-ray microscopy, the spatial resolution with high diffraction efficiencies has reached a limit mostly. A novel approach to focusing soft X-rays in the water window regime (2.3-4.4 nm) is to prepare non-periodic multilayer structures using as 1-dimensional zone plates in Laue diffraction geometry. For this purpose ZrO2/Ti multilayers were deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on Si(111) substrates in ultrahigh vacuum. The interfaces within the multilayer are positioned according to the Fresnel zone plate law. In this contribution, results of the Laue Lens fabrication by focused ion beam (FIB) and lens characteristics measured by a table-top X-ray source are presented.