Polymer X-ray refractive nano-lenses fabricated by additive technology.

A K Petrov,A A Fedyanin,A Snigirev,A A Barannikov,I I Lyatun,V A Yunkin,I Snigireva,N G Kokareva,M Polikarpov,K R Safronov,N B Klimova,K A Abrashitova,V O Bessonov,P A Ershov

doi:10.1364/oe.25.014173

Abstract

The present work demonstrates the potential applicability of additive manufacturing to X-Ray refractive nano-lenses. A compound refractive lens with a radius of 5 µm was produced by the two-photon polymerization induced lithography. It was successfully tested at the X-ray microfocus laboratory source and a focal spot of 5 μm was measured. An amorphous nature of polymer material combined with the potential of additive technologies may result in a significantly enhanced focusing performance compared to the best examples of modern X-ray compound refractive lenses.

Highlights

X-ray refractive optics has been intensively developed within the last years
Fabricated from materials with high refractive index such as Al, Be, C, Ni or Si they are capable of focusing high-energy radiation down to micro- and nano- scales fulfilling almost every task arising in modern synchrotron beamlines: long-focus lenses perform beam transport and energy filtering of the high-heat radiation at the front end [6,7,8], while twodimensional lenses in X-ray transfocators [9, 10] act as secondary focusing, imaging and microscopy devices
If refer to X-ray microscopy, the versatility of refractive optics allowed to integrate the observation of diffraction patterns [11, 12] and real-space images [13,14,15] within the one experimental setup

Summary

Introduction

X-ray refractive optics has been intensively developed within the last years. Since firstly introduced in 1996 as a drilled holes [1] in bulk aluminum, they have been realized in a wide spectrum of designs - in one [2] and two dimensions [3] with spherical [1], parabolic [4] or kinoform profile [5]. In order to fabricate the small-radius lenses without parasitic X-ray scattering, we decided to turn to alternative methods of manufacturing from amorphous polymer materials. At this point, additive manufacturing (or 3D printing) is the most promising approach. One of the most elaborate methods is the two-photon absorption induced polymerization lithography, which was introduced for the first time as far as in 1996 [26] It is a simple, reliable and relatively cheap method with sub-100 nm feature size [31] and a wide spectrum of processed materials. We introduce 2D parabolic X-ray refractive nano-lenses that were fabricated by 2PP lithography from amorphous polymer for the first time We test their optical performance in tests at the micro-focus X-ray laboratory source

Lenses

Discussion and conclusion