Nanofabrication of diffractive elements for soft x-ray and extreme ultraviolet applications using ion beam lithography

In the soft x-ray (SXR) and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral region, optical elements are mainly based on diffractive structures. We report on experiments showing the fabrication of such element, Using ion beam lithography. This allows single-step milling of freestanding transmission as well as reflection gratings. Minimum structure sizes of 70 nm were achieved. The optical elements were tested in slit. grating spectrographs at in ethanol-jet laser-induced plasma source. Relative spectral resolutions of lambda/Delta lambda approximate to 100 were observed in the SXR- and EUV-region. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1 3258655