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Small Bragg-plane slope errors revealed in synthetic diamond crystals.
Paresh Pradhan1, Michael Wojcik1, Xianrong Huang1
1Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
Journal of Synchrotron Radiation
|November 4, 2020
Summary
X-ray diamond crystal optics require flat Bragg planes for wavefront preservation. While synthetic diamond crystals show slight imperfections, high-temperature annealing significantly improves their performance, nearing silicon crystal quality.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Optics
- Crystallography
Background:
- Wavefront-preserving X-ray optics are crucial for advanced X-ray science applications.
- Perfect crystal lattices with flat Bragg planes are necessary for maintaining X-ray wavefronts during diffraction.
- Achieving such perfection in synthetic crystals is challenging due to inherent imperfections.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify the minimum achievable Bragg-plane slope errors in state-of-the-art synthetic diamond crystals.
- To compare these errors with those found in perfect silicon crystals.
- To investigate the impact of high-temperature annealing on reducing defects in diamond crystals.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing X-ray rocking curve imaging to precisely measure Bragg-plane slope errors.
- Comparing measurements from the best available synthetic diamond crystals with those of high-quality silicon crystals.
- Analyzing the effect of high-temperature annealing (1450°C) on diamond crystal imperfections.
Main Results:
- The best synthetic diamond crystals exhibit specific slope errors of approximately 0.08 µrad/mm².
- These errors are found to be only 50% greater than those in perfect silicon crystals (0.05 µrad/mm²).
- High-temperature annealing effectively reduces slope errors in nearly flawless diamond crystals, bringing them close to silicon crystal levels.
Conclusions:
- Synthetic diamond crystals are approaching the quality of silicon crystals for X-ray optics.
- High-temperature annealing is a promising technique for enhancing the performance of diamond crystals.
- Further research is needed to fully characterize the wavefront-preservation capabilities of treated diamond crystals.
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