High efficiency nano-focusing kinoform optics for synchrotron radiation

Modern synchrotron sources have provided for decades intense beams of photons over a large energy spectrum. The availability of improved optics and detectors has opened up new opportunities for the study of matter at the micrometre and nanometre scale in many disciplines. Whilst exploitation of micro-focused beams occurs almost daily in many beamlines, the production of beams of 100 nm is achieved on few instruments which use specialised optics. Refractive lenses, zone plates, curved mirrors, multilayers, and multilayer Laue lenses, can all focus x-rays to less than 50 nm under strict beam stability conditions. Focusing the synchrotron radiation to beam sizes smaller than 10 nm is considered the ultimate goal for the current decade. Silicon micro-technology has so far provided some of the most advanced x-ray refractive lenses; we report on design and characterisation of a novel silicon kinoform lens that is capable of delivering nano-beams with high efficiency.