Performance of the Double Multilayer Monochromator

A tunable, double multilayer x-ray monochromator has recently been implemented on the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) X25 wiggler beam line. It is based on a parallel pair of tungsten-boron-carbide multilayer films grown on silicon substrates and purchased from Osmic, Inc. of Troy, Michigan, USA. It acts as an optional alternative to the conventional double silicon crystal monochromator, and uses the same alignment mechanism. Two other NSLS beam lines also have had this kind of monochromator installed recently, following the lead of the NSLS X20C IBM/MIT beam line which has used a double multilayer monochromator for several years. Owing to the 100 times broader bandwidth of a multilayer x-ray monochromator, compared with a silicon monochromator, the multilayer monochromator has the obvious advantage of delivering 100 times the flux of a silicon monochromator, and thereby makes more efficient use of the continuous synchrotron radiation spectrum, yet preserves the narrow collimation of the incident synchrotron beam. In particular, multilayer x-ray bandwidths, on the order of 1%, are well-matched to x-ray undulator linewidths. Performance results for the X25 multilayer monochromator are presented, comparing it with the silicon monochromator. Of note is its shortand long-term performance as an x-ray monochromator delivering the brightness of the wiggler source in the presence of the high-power white beam. Detailed measurements of its spatial beam profile and wavelength dispersion have been made, and it is shown how its resolution could be improved when desired. Finally, its peculiar, anisotropic resolution function in reciprocal space, and its bearing upon x-ray crystallography and scattering experiments, will be discussed, and highlighted by the results of a protein crystallography experiment.