Extrusion of compound refractive x-ray lenses

Abstract

Compound refractive lenses (CRLs) are arrays of lenses designed to focus x-rays. The advantage of a focused x-ray beam is improvement in imaging resolution for applications such as microscopy and tomography. CRLs are desirable due to their simple designs and ease in implementation and alignment. One method of fabricating CRLs is extrusion. Extrusion can be employed to produce, for example, aluminum CRLs for high-energy applications because many aluminum products are produced in this manner. Multiple lenses can be extruded in an array in a single run. This method is relatively cost effective compared to others methods of fabricating CRLs. Two generations of extruded aluminum CRLs have been manufactured to date with lens wall thicknesses of 200 and 100 μm, respectively. The first-generation CRL yielded focusing and established the potential to produce high gain if reduced wall thicknesses could be achieved. Testing of the second generation is reported here.