DEVELOPMENTS IN TAPERED MONOCAPILLARY AND POLYCAPILLARY GLASS X-RAY CONCENTRATORS

Tapered glass capillaries can be used to condense both wide-band and monochromatic hard (> 5 keV) X-ray beams. These long, hollow, needle-like optics have been used in a variety of experiments to demonstrate their utility in areas such as protein crystallography, hard X-ray imaging, and Laue diffraction. Monocapillary versions of these X-ray concentrators have yielded intensity gains of up to 1000 and X-ray beam sizes as small as 50 nm. Recently, in an effort to make larger condensed beam sizes (> 10 mum), polycapillary tubing has been tapered and a 68 mum diameter X-ray beam with an intensity gain of 4.6 was observed using 6 keV synchrotron radiation. Results from developments of both types of tapered capillaries and from ray-tracing design efforts are presented.