Development of mirror manipulator for hard-x-ray nanofocusing at sub-50-nm level

Abstract

X-ray focusing using Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirrors is promising owing to their capability of highly efficient and energy-tunable focusing. We report the development of a mirror manipulator which enables KB mirror alignment with a high degree of accuracy. Mirror alignment tolerances were estimated using two types of simulators. On the basis of the simulation results, the mirror manipulator was developed to achieve an optimum KB mirror setup. As a result of focusing tests at BL29XUL of SPring-8, the beam size of 48 × 36 nm 2 (V×H) was achieved in the full width at half maximum at an x-ray energy of 15 keV. Spatial resolution tests showed that a scanning x-ray microscope equipped with the KB focusing system could resolve line-and-space patterns of 80 nm linewidth in a high visibility of 60%. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.