Direct intensity calibration of X-ray grazing-incidence microscopes with home-lab source.

Direct intensity calibration of X-ray grazing-incidence microscopes is urgently needed in quantitative studies of X-ray emission from laser plasma sources in inertial confinement fusion. The existing calibration methods for single reflecting mirrors, crystals, gratings, filters, and X-ray detectors are not applicable for such X-ray microscopes due to the specific optical structure and the restrictions of object-image relation. This article presents a reliable and efficient method that can be performed using a divergent X-ray source and an energy dispersive Si-PIN (silicon positive-intrinsic-negative) detector in an ordinary X-ray laboratory. The transmission theory of X-ray flux in imaging diagnostics is introduced, and the quantities to be measured are defined. The calibration method is verified by a W/Si multilayer-coated Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope with a field of view of ∼95 μm at 17.48 keV. The mirror reflectance curve in the 1D coordinate is drawn with a peak value of 20.9% and an uncertainty of ∼6.0%.