CLESSIDRA: Focusing Hard X-Rays Efficiently with Arrays Composed of Small Prisms.

Small prisms arranged such that the number of prisms to traverse by an x-ray beam is linearly increasing with distance from the symmetry axis of the device will direct an incident wave to a common cross over point. This structure can be understood as a special form of the Fresnel version of a concave refractive x-ray lens. Indeed it is obtained by removing blocks of optically passive material of equal height from the concave lens shape. It will be shown that the structure has a high refraction efficiency and that the losses are produced by problems in the fabrication of sufficiently sharp tips for the prisms. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]