Design and fabrication of Fresnel zone plates with large numbers of zones

The advent of high-brightness x-ray sources in the 10–40 keV region opens new possibilities of experiments with microbeams. Techniques to form these focused beams may be based on glancing mirrors, phase elements, or diffractive optics, in particular Fresnel zone plates ~FZPs!. Because of the long focal length and large acceptance, FZPs designed to work in the hard x-ray region tend to have quite large diameters and large numbers of zones. For instance, the zone plate described in this article has a 1860 mm diam, a focal length of f 53 m ~for 8 keV!, and 1860 zones. On a standard pattern generator, circular shapes are always approximated as simpler structures. The tolerance requirement for shape and positions of zones depends on the number of zones, and it is necessary to guarantee that the circular structures are approximated to the required degree of accuracy while keeping the size of the data structure to a reasonable size for processing by the exposure system. For instance, if polygons are used to approximate circular zones, a formula for the minimum acceptable number of polygon sides can be derived. An x-ray mask for a Fresnel phase zone plate ~FPZP! with 1860 zones was designed directly in Cambridge source pattern data format and fabricated using the Leica Cambridge e-beam tool installed in the CXrL. The zone plates presented in this article were designed for hard x rays, and multilevel x-ray lithography was employed as a fabrication technique to form absorber thickness sufficient to provide the necessary phase shift. Minimum gold features of 0.25 mm with thicknesses of 1.6 and 3 mm, were formed to be used with 8 and 20 keV photons, respectively. Finally, in order to estimate the quality of the zone plates during fabrication, a scanning electron microscope based moiré method was used. © 1997 American Vacuum Society. @S0734-211X~97!12706-8#