Fabrication and evaluation of a wideband multilayer laminar-type holographic grating for use with a soft-x-ray flat-field spectrograph in the region of 1.7 keV

A multilayer laminar-type holographic grating having an average groove density of 2400 lines/mm is designed and fabricated for use with a soft-x-ray flat-field spectrograph covering the 0.70-0.75 nm region. A varied-line-spaced groove pattern is generated by the use of an aspheric wavefront recording system, and laminar-type grooves are formed by a reactive ion-etching method. Mo/SiO2 multilayers optimized for the emission lines of Hf-M, Si-K, and W-M are deposited on one of the three designated areas on the grating surface in tandem. The measured first-order diffraction efficiencies at the respective centers of the areas are 18%-20%. The flat-field spectrograph equipped with the grating indicates a spectral linewidth of 8-14 eV for the emission spectra generated from electron-impact x-ray sources. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.