Abstract
A Schwarzschild type x-ray microscope has been designed, constructed, and tested. We calculated ray traces for a working distance of 1500 mm and a magnification of 15, taking account of the x-ray scattering due to mirror surface roughness. The calculation shows that this x-ray microscope can achieve a spatial resolution less than 0.3 μm. Ni/Cmultilayers were used as x-ray mirrors, which have the thickness (2d) of 7 nm and 30 layer pairs. These mirrors were coated by an electron beam evaporation method, with the substrate being cooled with liquid nitrogen. The reflectivity was measured with Al-Ka line x-ray and found to be 6%. The microscope demonstrated a spatial resolution of less than 0.5 μm at the 15 magnification and x-ray wavelength of 7nm. When bright laser-produced plasmas were used as an x-ray source, images can be recorded in a 400 ps laser pulse.
