Soft X-Ray Collimating Optics

Parallax Research Inc. proposes to develop practical collimating optics for soft x-ray lasers and elemental analyses applications. Although there is no new physics involved in the operation of these optics, the ability to fabricate them economically is a recent innovation. These optics are intended to accept broad energy bandwidths of low energy x-rays diverging from a small source and re-direct them into a well collimated beam or to focus them to a small spot. Used with laboratory x-ray lasers they would collimate the poorly collimated radiation emerging from the linear x-ray laser plasma sources. When used for x-ray elemental analyses applications for the determination of elements with Z less than A1, they would revolutionize the use of wavelength dispersive spectroscopy in Scanning and Transmission (SEM and TEM) Electron Microscopy by increasing the sensitivity of detection of these elements and decreasing data collection times. If these optics were used in conjunction with energy dispersive spectroscopy, they would enable the use of smaller detectors resulting in better energy resolution and better SNR. In this phase I program, we propose to produce the prototype of a collimator which we will sell to OEM and aftermarket suppliers of elemental analyses equipment for SEM and TAM systems. Our optics will have applications in x-ray laser research, imaging fusion plasmas, x-ray microscopy, and crystallography. We have a real market to make optics for SEM/TEM systems in which we expect to be able to sell over 100 optics/yr.