Compact soft x-ray reflectometer based on a line-emitting laser-plasma source

We describe a compact soft x-ray reflectometer for in-house characterization of water-window multilayer optics. The instrument is based on a line-emitting, liquid-jet, laser-plasma source in combination with angular scanning of the studied multilayer optics. With a proper choice of target liquid and thin-film filters, one or a few lines of well-defined wavelength dominate the spectrum and multilayer periods are measured with an accuracy of 0.003 nm using a multi-line calibration procedure. Absolute reflectivity may also be estimated with the instrument. The typical measurement time is currently 10 min. Although the principles of the reflectometer may be used in the entire soft x-ray and extreme ultraviolet range, the current instrument is primarily directed towards normal-incidence multilayer optics for water-window x-ray microscopy, and is thus demonstrated on W/B4C multilayers for this wavelength range. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.