Detailed characterization of polycapillary focusing x-ray lenses by a charge-coupled device detector and a pinhole

A method to measure the detailed performance of polycapillary x-ray optics by a pinhole and charge coupled device (CCD) detector was proposed in this study. The pinhole was located between the x-ray source and the polycapillary x-ray optics to determine the illuminating region of the incident x-ray beam on the input side of the optics. The CCD detector placed downstream of the polycapillary x-ray optics ensured that the incident x-ray beam controlled by the pinhole irradiated a specific region of the input surface of the optics. The intensity of the output beam of the polycapillary x-ray optics was obtained from the far-field image of the output beam of the optics captured by CCD detector. As an application example, the focal spot size, gain in power density, transmission efficiency, and beam divergence of different parts of a polycapillary focusing x-ray lenses (PFXRL) were measured by a pinhole and CCD detector. Three pinholes with diameters of 500, 1000, and 2000 μm were used to adjust the diameter of the incident x-ray beam illuminating the PFXRL from 500 μm to the entire surface of the input side of the PFXRL. The focal spot size of the PFXRL, gain in power density, transmission efficiency, and beam divergence ranged from 27.1 μm to 34.6 μm, 400 to 3460, 26.70% to 5.38%, and 16.8 mrad to 84.86 mrad, respectively.