Full-field hard x-ray microscopy with interdigitated silicon lenses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel silicon-based interdigitated lens design for full-field hard x-ray microscopy, achieving higher resolution and efficiency at energies above 15 keV, demonstrated with a 255 nm resolution prototype.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of interdigitated silicon lenses for hard x-ray microscopy, overcoming previous efficiency limitations and enabling higher resolution imaging.

Findings

Achieved ~255 nm resolution at 17 keV with the prototype lens.

Demonstrated the feasibility of silicon interdigitated lenses for hard x-ray applications.

Showed potential for significant improvements in x-ray microscopy at high energies.

Abstract

Full-field x-ray microscopy using x-ray objectives has become a mainstay of the biological and materials sciences. However, the inefficiency of existing objectives at x-ray energies above 15 keV has limited the technique to weakly absorbing or two-dimensional (2D) samples. Here, we show that significant gains in numerical aperture and spatial resolution may be possible at hard x-ray energies by using silicon-based optics comprising 'interdigitated' refractive silicon lenslets that alternate their focus between the horizontal and vertical directions. By capitalizing on the nano-manufacturing processes available to silicon, we show that it is possible to overcome the inherent inefficiencies of silicon-based optics and interdigitated geometries. As a proof-of-concept of Si-based interdigitated objectives, we demonstrate a prototype interdigitated lens with a resolution of ~255 nm at 17 keV.