Calculated efficiencies of three-material low stress coatings for diffractive x-ray transmission optics

Diffractive X-ray optical elements made by thin film coating techniques such as multilayer Laue lenses (MLL) and multilayer zone plates (MZP) are promising approaches to achieve resolutions in hard X-ray microscopy applications of less than 10 nm. The challenge is to make a lens with a large numerical aperture on the one hand and a decent working distance on the other hand. One of the limiting factors with the coated structures is the internal stress in the films, which can lead to significant bending of the substrate and various types of unwanted diffraction effects. Several approaches have been discussed to overcome this challenge. One of these is a three-material combination such as Mo/MoSi2/Si, where four single layers per period are deposited. Mo and Si represent the absorber and spacer in this case while MoSi2 forms a diffusion barrier; in addition the thicknesses of absorber and spacer are chosen to minimize residual stress of the overall coating. Here the diffraction efficiency as well as the profile of the beam in the focal plane are discussed in order to find a tradeoff between lowest residual stress and best diffraction properties.