Monochromatic X-ray imaging using a combination of doubly curved crystal and polycapillary X-ray lens

A monochromatic X-ray imaging setup based on a combination of a doubly curved crystal and a polycapillary focusing X-ray lens was designed. In this setup, the bent crystal optic was used not only to monochromatize but also to focus the divergent X-ray beam from a conventional X-ray source to form a monochromatic X-ray focal spot with a size of 426 x 467 mu m(2) at 17.5 keV. The beam expanding from this focal point was focused by the polycapillary optic to obtain a focal spot which was then used as the monochromatic X-ray imaging virtual source. The output focal spot size of the focusing polycapillary optic at 17.5 keV was 97 mu m. Compared with the beam expansion after the focal spot of the bent crystal optic, the beam expansion after the focal spot of the focusing polycapillary optic was relatively large. This was helpful for magnifying the X-ray image of the sample. The focused beam was helpful to decrease the exposure time for imaging small samples.