A two-dimensional waveguide beam for X-ray nanodiffraction

The micro- and nanofocus X-ray scattering (MINAXS) beamline of PETRA III is equipped with two consecutively arranged endstations, the last of which is the nanofocus endstation. The first in-beam commissioning of the experimental equipment was successfully performed at the end of 2010, using two-dimensionally confining hard X-ray silicon waveguides with cross sections of 50 nm x 50 mu m to 50 nm x 2 mu m for nanobeam generation. A full characterization of the waveguide-generated beams was performed, giving values for the beam geometries, the transmission efficiencies of the waveguides and absolute fluxes. Along with these results a detailed description of the setup is presented in this paper. A first high-resolution nanodiffraction experiment on a nanocrystalline TiN hard coating was performed to verify the resolution of the nanodiffraction setup and to reveal the local gradients across the blasted TiN coating. In conclusion, the main concern is the availability of the nanobeam, how it was generated and the fact that a beam out of a two-dimensionally confining waveguide was used for diffraction experiments for the first time.