Soft X-ray reflectivity and thermal stability of CoCr/C multilayer X-ray mirrors

The development of highly reflective multilayer mirrors for use in the wavelength region around 6 nm is desired for X-ray photoemission spectroscopy for inner-shell excitation using a Schwarzschild objective. For this application, reflectivity is the most critical parameter determining the performance of multilayer mirrors, because the reflectivity of multilayers in the 6 nm region is generally very low. We have designed CoCr/C multilayer mirrors with a comparatively high reflectivity at around normal incidence and have fabricated them by magnetron sputtering. The measured peak reflectivity is about 16% at a wavelength of around 6 nm and an incident angle of 88degrees. The reflectivity remains almost constant for 4 h under 300degreesC in an Ar atmosphere.