New mirror that can be flexibly shaped improves X-ray microscopes(phys.org)
phys.org
New mirror that can be flexibly shaped improves X-ray microscopes
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-mirror-flexibly-ray-microscopes.html
2 comments
For the curious people, there are no practical refractive materials for x-rays, and mirror shapes have to be 4 times more accurate than equivalent refractive systems for the same diffraction limit.
Can x-rays be waveguided with x-rays and/or other bands?
- "Shattering the 'copper or optics' paradigm: humble plastic waveguides outperform" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39493372
- dual beam waveguiding with optics, NIRS + ultrasound: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617859
- "Shattering the 'copper or optics' paradigm: humble plastic waveguides outperform" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39493372
- dual beam waveguiding with optics, NIRS + ultrasound: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617859
Do you know what the objective limits are with current mirrors? They just say that nanometer objectives are not possible with current mirrors, but no measure of SOTA
"Single-crystal lithium niobate is useful in X-ray technology because it can be expanded and contracted by an electric field and polished to make a highly reflective surface. This allows it to serve as both the actuator and the reflective surface, simplifying the device."
Pretty interesting kernel of info there, but it would be nice to know how fast they're able to make corrections, and how they're measuring the aberration. From the sparse info provided, they take an image, look at this '2' character, and tweak 'something' until it looks a little better. This suggests it's a slow process, so the advantage over conventional methods is how fine a correction you can make? And how much control over the surface do you have, is it just 1 dimensional?