No abstract

Homoepitaxial hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) growth on GaN substrates grown with a Na-flux method, which is the most promising approach for fabrication of large-diameter, low-dislocation-density, fast-growing GaN wafers, was attempted for the first time. We found that, when different growth methods are combined, the differences in oxygen concentrations between a seed and grown crystal must be eliminated to maintain the crystallographic quality of the seed. Two kinds of Na-flux-grown seed crystals were prepared; one had a surface composed of c, {101̅2}, and {101̅1} planes, the other a surface composed entirely of c-planes. Both crystals were sliced, ground, mirror-polished, and applied for 500-μm-thick HVPE growth. In the former sample, the seed crystal generated fine cracks, and the epitaxially grown layer had a rough surface and included many dislocations; the latter sample showed no fault. For clarifying the mechanism of crystal degradation, we investigated the lattice constants of each growth sector using an X-ray microbeam and found that lattice constants in the {101̅1}-growth sector were expanded compared to those in other growth sectors due to oxygen impurities. These values were estimated to be much larger than those of HVPE crystals, resulting in the crystal degradation after the HVPE growth by a lattice mismatch.

We observed two groups of galaxies, the NGC 5044 group (WP 23) and Hickson's compact group HCG 51, with ASCA. We detected an extended bright soft X-ray emission, which indicates the existence of large amounts of a hot X-ray emitting gas in both targets. The temperature of the hot gas is ∼ 1 keV for both objects, which is equivalent to their galaxy velocity dispersion. The metal abundance of the gas is 0.3–0.5 solar value for both objects, which is similar to that of rich clusters of galaxies. The Si to Fe abundance ratio is smaller than that of rich clusters of galaxies, although the iron abundances determined by the Fe-L lines are somewhat uncertain. The X-ray luminosities in the 0.5–10 keV band are 1 × 1043 erg s−1 and 5 × 1042 erg s−1 for the NGC 5044 group and HCG 51, respectively, which are higher by an order of magnitude than those of X-ray bright elliptical galaxies. This makes HCG 51 one of the most X-ray luminous compact groups. Both objects have a total gravitating mass of Mtotal ∼ 2.0 × 1013M⊙, and a gas mass and a galaxy mass of Mgas ∼ Mgalaxy ∼ 1.5 × 1012M⊙. The ratios among these mass components are Mgas/Mgalaxy ∼ 1 and (Mgas + Mgalaxy)/ Mtotal ∼ 0.2 within ∼ 350 kpc for both objects. The latter is similar to previous ROSAT results for many groups of galaxies, while the former is larger than the average value of the ROSAT-observed groups. Moreover, the metal abundances of the present two groups are significantly higher than those of the NGC 2300 group and HCG 62, and are comparable to those of clusters. These suggest that the hot-gas mass and metal abundances can scatter widely among groups, compared to the small variance found among rich clusters.

The x-ray properties of multinested thin-foil mirror x-ray telescopes (XRT's) on board ASCA, the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, were fully evaluated with an x-ray pencil beam.Scanning over the telescope aperture of 35 cm in diameter with an x-ray pencil beam, we found the effective area of a set of XRT's to be 325, 200, and 113 cm(2) at energies of 1.5, 4.5, and 8.0 keV, respectively. We derive the point-spread functions (PSF's) of the XRT's by measuring the image profile at the focal plane with an x-ray CCD. The PSF is found to exhibit a sharp core concentrated within 30 arcsec and a broad wing extended to 3 arcmin in half-power diameter. We also evaluate the contribution of stray light, which is caused by the single reflection of x rays by primary or secondary mirrors and by the backside reflection of the mirrors. To obtain the characteristics of the XRT in the energy region of 0.5-10.0 keV, incorporated with the measurements at discrete energies, we develop a ray-tracing method with the telescope design parameter, the PSF, and optical constants. In particular, we obtain the optical constants around the gold-atom M shell (Au-M) absorption-edge energies by measuring the reflectivity of our mirror sample, with monochromatized x-rays in the energy range of 2.0-3.5 keV from synchrotron radiation. Taking into account the PSF's and optical constants, we find that our ray-tracing program can reproduce all these XRT performances.

No abstract

Results of phase-contrast X-ray imaging are presented. The optical system employed consisted of a successive arrangement of horizontal and vertical (+, -) double crystals taking asymmetric Bragg reflection with an asymmetry factor of ∼0.2. The original beam size was thus expanded in both directions and the field of view actually obtained was ∼5×5 mm2. Boundary structures in samples were clearly observed with much higher contrast than those obtained in conventional absorption-contrast imaging. Since this method works in real time, it will provide a new X-ray imaging diagnosis technique for in situ observation over a large area of the samples.

A new total-reflection zone plate that consists of a reflective zone pattern with varied-space on a flat substrate was fabricated for hard X-ray nanofocusing. This device is much easier to fabricate than other focusing devices. This is because its focusing size is much smaller than its finest constituent structure since it exploits the effect of glancing X-rays by having a small total reflection angle. Its focusing properties were evaluated using 10-keV X-rays and a focusing size of 14.4 nm was achieved.

A thin silicon nano-overlayer (SNOL) fabricated by oxidation and etchback in a separation by implantation of oxygen wafer was investigated by grazing incident x-ray diffraction at incident angles between 0.01° and 0.1° below the critical angle of total reflection (0.18° ). We measured {220} reflections by probing the sample in depth and found that the SNOL has finite domains under strain close to the surface. We also found that annealing the sample up to 1000 °C significantly reduced inhomogeneous in depth strain and increased the size of the domains in the surface region of the SNOL.