Toward one nanometer X-ray focusing: a complex refractive lens design

We report a design for one nanometer X-ray focusing by a complex refractive lens, which is capable of focusing 20 keV X-rays down to a lateral size of 0.92 nm (full-width at half-maximum (FWHM)) and an axial size of 98 nm (FWHM) with intensity gain of 49050. This complex refractive lens is comprised of a series of kinoform lenses, whose aperture is gradually matched to the converging trace of the X-ray beam so as to increase the numerical aperture (NA). The theoretical principle of the proposed complex refractive lens is presented. The NAs of these lenses are calculated. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed design can focus the X-ray beam into sub-nanometer while remaining high gain.