Simulated imaging with a soft X-ray reflection zone plate in the 1-D line scanning mode for “water window” analysis

Abstract We demonstrate and explore computational imaging by reflection zone plates (RZPs) in the soft X-ray range at, e.g., 395 eV. Though they violate the sine condition, point-to-point focusing RZPs are capable of low off-axis aberrations if the acceptance angle is constrained to ≈ 25 mrad in the horizontal (H) and 4 mrad in the dispersive, vertical (V) direction, at which a 10 µm line focus is used to scan the sample in one dimension (1-D). For an object with an angular diameter of 2.5 mrad, simulations predict a spatial resolution of 7 µm, at a (+1)st order diffraction efficiency of 13 %. The spherical RZP substrate supports complementary wide-band, parallel spectroscopy in the water window between the C and O K-edge, at a resolving power E/ΔE ≈ (1 – 4) × 10 3 for an incoherent source of 3 × 1 µm 2 (H × V).