Advanced X-ray Optics Component coupled high accuracy mechanics for X-ray nano focusing – AXOC

The development of microscopy has been driven by a desire to see ever finer detail to expand our
knowledge of the world around us. There is a growing need to explore the detailed structural,
morphological, magnetic and chemical properties of heterogeneous matter below 100 nm length
scales in almost all fields of science, including physics, chemistry, material science, medicine, biology
and earth and environmental science.
The main motivation behind the new 3rd generation diffraction limited synchrotron sources and Xray/
VUV Free Electron Laser (FEL) is the possibility of providing highly intense focused x-ray beams
with diameters in the range of 20 nm to 1 µm. This will enable new scientific perspectives to be
realised in biosciences, atomic, molecular and plasma physics, material science, magnetism and of
course nanoscience. Hard X-rays can penetrate deep inside matter and allow scientists to investigate
the world around us at the scale of individual atoms and molecules. They are an essential tool for
answering difficult questions about the strange things that occur at the nanometre scale, where
materials behave very differently from the way they do in bulk and the traditional laws of physics do
not apply. At the nanoscale, the principles of temperature, electricity and magnetism are completely
different, which makes the basic scientific research to be conducted using an X-ray nanoprobe so
important before commercial products exploiting nanotechnology can be developed. These X-ray
nanoprobes will boost scientific knowledge tremendously in selected topics but to perform such
experiments the manufacture of very high quality optics (diffraction limited at 0.06-0.25 nm
wavelengths) will be a key issue to ensure very small spot sizes with high numbers of photons.
The principal aim of our project AXOC is to develop such a high precision optical system coupled
with a very high quality mechanical system to ensure the optimal performances of these X-ray
nanoprobes.
These new systems represent a significant technological challenge. All worldwide synchrotron
sources, FELs and tabletop system could immediately benefit from our development. AXOC will
push the state of the art in X-ray microscopy to new levels of resolution; both in terms of X-ray optics
and precision mechanical design, and enable qualitatively new studies of phenomena at the
nanoscale unavailable up to now