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1. Introduction
About five years ago we celebrated the 150th
anniversary of Wilhelm Conrad R`ntgen's birthday
(1845, March 27) together with the 100th anniversary
of his famous discovery of a new kind of rays"
(Whrzburg, Germany, Nov. 1895). Between 1895 and
1897 R` ntgen performed a large number of experiments with his "X-Strahlen" in order to find out their
properties and, if possible, to disclose their nature. He
summarized the results in his famous three
"Mittheilungen" (communications) in the "Minutes of
the Wh rzburg Society for Physics and Medicine"
not just easily accessible, but later on reprinted in the
"Annalen der Physik und Chemie" [1].
The most remarkable property of the new rays,
their ability to traverse many materials with small
absorption, found immediately medical application in
surgery. The absorption coefficient seemed to depend
on the density of the material, so R`ntgen concluded
that the rays spread out in a medium containing small
absorbing particles. Consequently the arrangement of
those particles should possibly influence the absorption, for instance in a crystal: irradiation parallel or
vertical to its axis should result in differently strong
absorption. R` ntgen's experiments with calcite and
quartz crystals, however, did not reveal such an
interaction-but had he used a narrower incident beam
and much longer exposure times he could have been
the discoverer of X-ray diffraction already in 1895!
Instead he wrote: "Frequently I searched for diffraction effects, but unfortunately, maybe due to their
week intensity, without success".
In further experiments R` ntgen tried to deflect the
X-rays using prisms, but he could not detect a change
of their directions, so he concluded: it is impossible to
concentrate X-rays with lenses.
All in all R`ntgen discovered and described a lot
of properties of his rays, but must finally confess to be
unable to answer the fundamental question about their
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n = 2d sin
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ellipsoidal profile polished to sub-nanometer roughness, it focuses X-rays from the narrow line focus of a
micro-tube to a point of 0.3 mm size and 1 mrad
divergence in a distance of 600 mm. The 18 Watt
generator is sufficient to deliver the same photon flux
at the probe as would be available from a 5 kW
rotating anode generator under the same geometrical
conditions. This arrangement is especially useful for
the study of small biological crystals with large unit
cell dimensions.
The just described method is severely limited by
the small critical angles for specular reflection: they
can never be larger than 10 mrad for CuK or 5 mrad
for MoK radiation, resp. Larger angles of incidence
are possible for diffracting gratings with lattice
parameter gradients: graded multilayers, or gradient
(delta-) crystals. This will be discussed in the
following chapter.
4. Application of Interference Effects for
Realizing X-ray Optics
4.1. Introduction, Early Work
the intercrystalline-plane spacing is varied as a function of position in the crystal". To achieve this
variation Smither discussed the use of thermal gradients as well as the variation of the elemental
composition in the crystal. As possible applications
he mentioned a gamma-ray telescope or the production of real images of strong X-ray sources [17].
By applying a thermal gradient to the crystal the
Bragg angle can be made a variable that could be
controlled as a function of position in the crystal. But
only a small effect is to be expected: a T of 200C
gives a d/d= 2.7A10-3 in quartz, delivering only 200
arcsec for , if B=20.
Considerably larger changes in the d spacing can
be achieved in crystals made of two or more
components. If the Sn content varies from 0 to 6% in a
Ni crystal, the change in d spacing would equal a thermal gradient of 1100C/cm (or even 10 4C when
changing from pure Si to pure Ge). The disadvantage
of this method is that it works with a fixed gradient: it
does not have the ability to change the spacing
gradient in order to adjust for different wavelengths.
Many applications require the crystals to be bent.
Smither discusses the special case of the focusing of a
parallel beam of -rays in a gamma-ray telescope
where the surface of the crystals has to be shaped like
a hyperbola (in transmission) or a parabola (in reflection).
An even broader range of applications could be
achieved by using double focusing. Because each of
the just discussed new crystal elements acts like a
cylindrical lens, one crystal focuses a point source to
a line. Adding now a second element rotated by 90,
double focusing occurs and a point source is focused
to a point image. Double focusing can also be
obtained with a single crystal element bent in two
dimensions, cp. Fig. 5. Using double focusing bent
crystals one could possibly "think of many applications for focusing X-rays or -rays that have parallels
in what is done with visible light".
Finally Smither mentions the "superlattice"
structures (multilayers) which had been proposed just
one year ago at that time [18]. They also could be used
as focusing elements, if one would be able to change
the spacing of the superlattice along the surface of
these elements in a controlled way. Superiattices are
preferably applied to longer X-ray wavelengths.
In another paper Variable-metric diffraction
crystals for X-ray optics", written ten years later,
Smither discusses the possibilities of applying appropriately bent graded crystals to improve the
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Fig. 5. The application of a thermal gradient for double focusing with an especially shaped single crystal element. From [17].
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Perhaps one of the best examples for the introduction and application of multilayers for the
realization of beam paths similar to those in light
optics is the paper "Parallel-beam coupling into
channel-cut monochromators using curved graded
multilayers" by Schuster and G `bel [22]. Since 1981
[18], synthetic multilayer X-ray Bragg reflectors (Fig.
6) are known to provide controllable band pass
characteristics, combined with high reflectivity and
stability [23, 24]. Applying tailored thicknesses, a
variation of the period with the depth became possible
for the fabrication of "multimirrors" which are able to
increase the angular or energy range of reflection
[25]. But there exist the additional possibility to vary
the layer thickness laterally, opening up further X-ray
optical applications [26, 27]. One of them is the
adaptation of divergent X-rays to channel-cut monochromators.
Schuster and G`bel mention the example of a
Ge(220) monochromator which has a divergence in
the scattering plane of about 12 arcsec for CuK1
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