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Self-standing bent silicon crystals for very high efficiency Laue lens

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Abstract

Silicon mono-crystals have been bent thanks to a series of parallel superficial indentations on one of the largest faces of the crystals. This technique relies on irreversible compression of the crystal beneath and beside the indentations. This latter causes deformation with no need for external device, resulting in a uniform self-standing curvature within the crystal. Indented Si crystals have been characterized at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility using a monochromatic beam ranging from 150 to 700 keV. Crystals exhibited very high diffraction efficiency over a broad range of energy, peaking 95% at 150 keV. Measured angular spread of the diffracted beam was always very close to the morphological curvature of the sample under investigation, proving that the energy passband of bent crystals can be controlled by simply imparting a selected curvature to the sample. The method of superficial indentations was found to offer high reproducibility and easy control of diffraction properties of the crystals. Moreover the method is cheap and simple, being based on mass production tools. A Laue lens made of crystals bent by superficial indentations can provide high-efficiency concentration of hard x-ray photons, leading significant improvement in many astrophysical applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully thank N. Abrosimov, P. Bastie, T. Buslaps, G. Roudil and J. Rousselle for assistance during data taking at ESRF. The authors are also grateful to ASI for partial financial support through the Laue project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Ferrara, Via Saragat 1/c, 44122, Ferrara, Italy

    Valerio Bellucci, Riccardo Camattari, Vincenzo Guidi & Ilaria Neri

  2. CNR - IDASC SENSOR Lab., Brescia, Italy

    Valerio Bellucci, Riccardo Camattari, Vincenzo Guidi & Ilaria Neri

  3. Space Sciences Laboratory, 7 Gauss Way, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-7450, USA

    Nicolas Barrière

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  1. Valerio Bellucci
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  2. Riccardo Camattari
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  3. Vincenzo Guidi
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  4. Ilaria Neri
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  5. Nicolas Barrière
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Correspondence to Vincenzo Guidi.

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Bellucci, V., Camattari, R., Guidi, V. et al. Self-standing bent silicon crystals for very high efficiency Laue lens. Exp Astron 31, 45–58 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-011-9226-5

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