Articles you may be interested inFabrication of nanoscale, high throughput, high aspect ratio freestanding gratings J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 30, 06FF03 (2012); 10.1116/1.4755815 High-efficiency, large-bandwidth silicon-on-insulator grating coupler based on a fully-etched photonic crystal structure Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 051126 (2010);The authors report a silicon-on-insulator ͑SOI͒ process for the fabrication of ultrahigh aspect ratio freestanding gratings for high efficiency x-ray and extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy. This new grating design will lead to blazed transmission gratings via total external reflection on the grating sidewalls for x rays incident at graze angles below their critical angle ͑about 1°-2°͒. This critical-angle transmission ͑CAT͒ grating combines the alignment and figure insensitivity of transmission gratings with high broadband diffraction efficiency, which traditionally has been the domain of blazed reflection gratings. The required straight and ultrahigh aspect ratio freestanding structures are achieved by anisotropic etching of ͗110͘ SOI wafers in potassium hydroxide ͑KOH͒ solution. To overcome structural weakness, chromium is patterned as a reactive ion etch mask to form a support mesh. The grating with period of 574 nm is written by scanning-beam interference lithography ͑SBIL͒ which is based on the interference of phase-locked laser beams. Freestanding structures are accomplished by etching the handle and device layers in tetramethylammonium hydroxide and KOH solution, respectively, followed by hydrofluoric acid etching of the buried oxide. To prevent collapse of the high aspect ratio structures caused by water surface tension during drying, the authors use a supercritical point dryer after dehydration of the sample in pure ethanol. The authors have successfully fabricated 574 nm period freestanding gratings with support mesh periods of 70, 90, and 120 m in a 10 m thick membrane on ͗110͘ SOI wafers. The size of a single die is 10ϫ 12 mm 2 divided into four 3 ϫ 3.25 mm 2 windows. The aspect ratio of a single grating bar achieved is about 150, as required for the CAT grating configuration.
Diffraction gratings are ubiquitous wavelength dispersive elements for photons as well as for subatomic particles, atoms, and large molecules. They serve as enabling devices for spectroscopy, microscopy, and interferometry in numerous applications across the physical sciences. Transmission gratings are required in applications that demand high alignment and figure error tolerances, low weight and size, or a straight-through zero-order beam. However, photons or particles are often strongly absorbed upon transmission, e.g., in the increasingly important extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-ray band, leading to low diffraction efficiency. We demonstrate the performance of a critical-angle transmission (CAT) grating in the EUV and soft x-ray band that for the first time combines the advantages of transmission gratings with the superior broadband efficiency of blazed reflection gratings via reflection from nanofabricated periodic arrays of atomically smooth nanometer-thin silicon mirrors at angles below the critical angle for total external reflection. The efficiency of the CAT grating design is not limited to photons, but also opens the door to new, sensitive, and compact experiments and applications in atom and neutron optics, as well as for the efficient diffraction of electrons, ions, or molecules.
We report on measurements of the diffraction efficiency of 200-nm-period freestanding blazed transmission gratings for wavelengths in the 0.96 to 19.4 nm range. These critical-angle transmission (CAT) gratings achieve highly efficient blazing over a broad band via total external reflection off the sidewalls of smooth, tens of nanometer thin ultrahigh aspect-ratio silicon grating bars and thus combine the advantages of blazed x-ray reflection gratings with those of more conventional x-ray transmission gratings. Prototype gratings with maximum depths of 3.2 and 6 μm were investigated at two different blaze angles. In these initial CAT gratings the grating bars are monolithically connected to a cross support mesh that only leaves less than half of the grating area unobstructed. Because of our initial fabrication approach, the support mesh bars feature a strongly trapezoidal cross section that leads to varying CAT grating depths and partial absorption of diffracted orders. While theory predicts broadband absolute diffraction efficiencies as high as 60% for ideal CAT gratings without a support mesh, experimental results show efficiencies in the range of ∼50-100% of theoretical predictions when taking the effects of the support mesh into account. Future minimization of the support mesh therefore promises broadband CAT grating absolute diffraction efficiencies of 50% or higher.
Volume x-ray gratings consisting of a multilayer coating deposited on a blazed substrate can diffract with very high efficiency even in high orders if diffraction conditions in-plane (grating) and out-of-plane (Bragg multilayer) are met simultaneously. This remarkable property however depends critically on the ability to create a structure with near atomic perfection. In this work we report on a method to produce these structures. We report measurements that show, for a 5000 l/mm grating diffracting in the 3 rd order, a diffraction efficiency of 37.6% at a wavelength of 13.6 nm, close to the theoretical maximum. This work now shows a direct route to achieving high diffraction efficiency in high order at wavelengths throughout the soft x-ray energy range.
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