Highly Monochromatic Soft X-ray Beam Source Design

The soft X-ray radiation in the range from 100eV to 1keV consists of rich significant emission lines and the blackbody continuum. It is commonly used in X-ray instruments for space scientific missions, and the instruments should be well calibrated for spectral response before the flight. Because of the obvious spectra contamination from higher orders of diffraction, X-ray source used traditional gratings is difficult to get highly monochromatic X-ray beam. A new monochromator based on single-order diffraction grating is designed in patterns of zigzag or photon sieves, which has excellent diffraction characteristics of suppressing all higher orders of diffraction from shorter wavelength. The monochromator can keep the percent of the higher order contamination below 0.3%. The results can bring great advantages in preflight calibration of X-ray instruments for space science purposes.