Development of a flat-field spectrometer with a wideband Ni/C multilayer grating in the 1–3.5 keV range
To develop a flat-field spectrometer with coverage of the 1–3.5 keV range, a wideband Ni/C multilayer grating was invented. The multilayer consists of two kinds of layer structures. One is a conventional periodic multilayer of thickness D{sub 1} = 5.6 nm, Ni thickness ratio to the multilayer period γ{sub 1} = 0.5 and the number of layers N{sub 1} = 79. Both the first and last layers are Ni. The other is a C/Ni bilayer of D{sub 2} = 8.4 nm, γ{sub 2} = 0.53 and N{sub 2} = 2. The first layer is C and then Ni. The aperiodic multilayer from the topmost C/Ni bilayer was coated on a laminar-type grating having an effective grating constant of 1/2400 mm, groove depth of 2.8 nm, and duty ratio (land width/groove period) of 0.5. In a preliminary experiment, the diffraction efficiency was in excess of 0.8% in the energy range of 2.1-3.3 keV and the maximum of 5.4% at 3.1 keV at a constant angle of incidence of 88.54°, which is considerably higher than that of an Au-coated grating before deposition of the multilayer.