Fabrication of Damage-Free Curved Silicon Crystal Substrate for a Focusing X-Ray Spectrometer by Plasma Chemical Vaporization Machining

In the X-ray fluorescence analysis on sub-micron particle, application of the doubly curved crystal (DCC) spectrometer with Johansson-type geometry is effective to improve the lowest limit of detection because DCC makes it possible to focus and monochromatize an X-ray beam simultaneously. A strain-free crystal is essential for the high-performance focusing crystal spectrometer. We propose the application of the open-air type numerically controlled plasma chemical vaporization machining (NC-PCVM), which utilizes neutral reactive species generated by atmospheric pressure plasma, to fabricate the DCC substrate. By applying NC-PCVM technique, a curvature radius error of 0.08% was obtained, and there was no degradation of the crystallinity of the Si (111) substrate.