Dr Christian David, Paul Scherrer Institut

Diffractive x-ray optics fabricated by micro- and nanolithography techniques can be used to control the wavefront of x-rays with sub-wavelength precision. We report on the development of various devices and their application in x-ray microscopy, radiography and metrology experiments. Fresnel zone plates (FZPs) are used for full field transmission x-ray microscopes (TXM) and scanning transmission x-ray microscopes (STXM) for high resolution imaging and analysis. In addition we have developed an interferometric hard x-ray phase imaging technique based on diffraction gratings, which can be used for phase contrast imaging and wave front metrology on synchrotron and x-ray tube sources. In addition, we report on first experiments on nanofocusing and diagnostics with hard x-rays from the free-electron laser LCLS in Stanford.