[en] There are many physical characterization approaches which evaluate a limited set of structural elements in multilayers: they study a single interface; they study a single layer of material; they study a very small sample of a multilayer. On a broader basis, the interference phenomena on which the performance of x-ray optic multilayers is based integrates over the full area/volume of the multilayer illuminated. In order to gain understanding of the impact of imperfections on multilayer performance it is necessary to develop an experimental approach that provides detailed information about the effects of interfaces in the multilayer obtained when the multilayer is being applied in a manner directly related to application. Additionally, it is also of interest to determine the breadth of application of any such experimental approach to the general study of interfaces in solids. The primary goal in this research was to develop an experimental methodology to quantitatively characterize both the physical and electronic characteristics of interfaces in multilayer structures. The approach was to fabricate multilayers from three elements so that one monolayer or less thick ''marker layers'' were selectively deposited on a given set interfaces in the multilayer. These ''marker layers'' could then interrogated by scattering and fluorescence techniques for their distribution, for their atomic arrangements relative to the thicker layers and for their electronic state at the interfaces as affected by the thicker layer materials. WC/C multilayers with one monolayer (2.33(angstrom)) of tantalum at the WC on C and the C on WC interfaces were fabricated and studied. Ta was selected as the marker layer material as its L(sub 3) absorption edge is at 9879 eV, more than 300 eV less than the W L(sub 3) edge at 10200 eV. Reflectivities at 9850 eV, 9879 eV and 9950 eV were measured: Ta layers standing wave fluorescence on the multilayer Bragg peak at these energies and fluorescence EXAFS of the Ta layers were also obtained. These results are modeled and the implications of the results for x-ray optic structures and the study of buried interfaces in solids discussed

[en] Ab initio molecular dynamics calculations are adapted to treat dense plasmas for temperatures exceeding the electronic Fermi temperature. Extended electronic states are obtained in a plane wave basis by using pseudopotentials for the ion cores in the local density approximation to density functional theory. The method reduces to conventional first principles molecular dynamics at low temperatures with the expected high level of accuracy. The occurrence of thermally excited ion cores at high temperatures is treated by means of final state pseudopotentials. The method is applied to the shock compression Hugoniot equation of state for aluminum. Good agreement with experiment is found for temperatures ranging from zero through 105K

[en] Ab initio molecular dynamics calculations are performed for the equation of state of aluminum, spanning condensed matter and dense plasma regimes. Electronic exchange and correlation are included with either a zero- or finite-temperature local density approximation potential. Standard methods are extended to above the Fermi temperature by using final state pseudopotentials to describe thermally excited ion cores. The predicted Hugoniot equation of state agrees well with earlier plasma theories and with experiment for temperatures from 0 to 3 x 10⁶ K

[en] Low energy density in conventional capacitors severely limits efforts to miniaturize power electronics and imposes design limitations on electronics in general. We have successfully applied physical vapor deposition technology to greatly increase capacitor energy density. The high dielectric breakdown strength we have achieved in alumina thin films allows high energy density to be achieved with this moderately low dielectric constant material. The small temperature dependence of the dielectric constant, and the high reliability, high resistivity, and low dielectric loss of Al 2 O 3 , make it even more appealing. We have constructed single dielectric layer thin film capacitors and shown that they can be stacked to form multilayered structures with no loss in yield for a given capacitance. Control of film growth morphology is critical for achieving the smooth, high quality interfaces between metal and dielectric necessary for device operation at high electric fields. Most importantly, high rate deposition with extremely low particle generation is essential for achieving high energy storage at a reasonable cost. This has been achieved by reactive magnetron sputtering in which the reaction to form the dielectric oxide has been confined to the deposition surface. By this technique we have achieved a yield of over 50% for 1 cm 2 devices with an energy density of 14 J per cubic centimeter of Al 2 O 3 dielectric material in 1.2 kV, 4 nF devices. By further reducing defect density and increasing the dielectric constant of the material, we will be able to increase capacitance and construct high energy density devices to meet the requirements of applications in power electronics

[en] The technique of using a nsec prepulse to create and ionize the plasma followed by a psec pulse to heat the plasma has enabled us to achieve saturated laser output for low-Z neon-like and nickel-like ions driven by small lasers with less than ten joules of energy. In this work we model recent experiments done using the COMET laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to illuminate slab targets of Pd up to 1.25 cm long with a 2 joule, 600 ps prepulse followed 700 psec later by a 6 joule, 6 psec drive pulse. The experiments measure the two-dimensional near-field and far-field laser patterns for the 14.7 nm Ni-like Pd x-ray laser line. This line has already demonstrated saturated output. The experiments are modeled using the LASNEX code to calculate the hydrodynamic evolution of the plasma and provide the temperatures and densities to the CRETIN code, which then does the kinetics calculations to determine the gain. Using a ray tracing code to calculate the near and far-field patterns, the simulations are then compared with experiments. We also present several new schemes that we are modeling. The first scheme is Pd-like Nd that has a promising 5d-5p laser line near 24.3 nm and 5p-5s lines near 40 nm. Another potential scheme is Pt-like U with 6d-6p laser lines near 22.5 and 25.8 nm. A Nd-like U laser scheme is also considered

[en] Nanometer period metallic multilayers are ideal structures to investigate electronic phenomena at interfaces between metal films since interfacial atoms comprise a large atomic fraction of the samples. The Cu/Cr binary pair is especially suited to study the interfaces in metals since these elements are mutually insoluble, thus eliminating mixing effects and compound formation and the lattice mismatch is very small. This allows the fabrication of high structural quality Cu/Cr multilayers that have a structure which can be approximated in calculations based on idealized atomic arrangements. The electronic structure of the Cu and the Cr layers in several samples of thin Cu/Cr multilayers were studied using x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Total electron yield was measured and used to study the white lines at the Cu L(sub 2) and L(sub 3) absorption edges. The white lines at the Cu absorption edges are strongly related to the unoccupied d-orbitals and are used to calculate the amount of charge transfer between the Cr and Cu atoms in interfaces. Analysis of the Cu white lines show a charge transfer of 0.026 electrons/interfacial Cu atom to the interfacial Cr atoms. In the Cu XAS spectra we also observe a van Hove singularity between the L(sub 2) and L(sub 3) absorption edges as expected from the structural analysis. The absorption spectra are compared to partial density of states obtained from a full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital calculation. The calculations support the presence of charge transfer and indicate that it is localized to the first two interfacial layers in both Cu and Cr

[en] In this study we characterize electronic effects in short-period ((approx)20(angstrom)) metallic multilayer films in which 40% of the atoms are at an interface using near-edge (L(sub 3,2)) x-ray absorption. This study investigates Cu/TM where TM= Cr, MO, W, Ta, Re. These immiscible elemental pairs are ideal to study as they form no compounds and exhibit terminal solid solubility. An interest in the charge transfer between elements in alloys and compounds has led to studies using x-ray absorption as described above. Near edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS), a technique used for analyzing x-ray absorption near the absorption edge of the element, is especially suited to study the amount of unoccupied states in the conduction band of a metal. The d-metals spectra show large peaks at the absorption edges called ''white lines.'' These are due to the unoccupied d-states just above the Fermi level in these metals. A study of the white lines in the 3d metals show that as the d-band is increasingly occupied the white lines decrease in intensity. Starting with Ti (3d(sup 2) 4s(sup 2)), which has an almost empty d-band and shows strong white lines, the white-line intensities decrease across the Periodic Chart to Cu (3d(sup 10) 4s(sup 1)), which has a full d-band and no white lines. Systematic measurement of the L(sub 3,2) absorption spectra of bulk elemental Cu and Cu in the Cu/TM multilayers enabled measurement of the charge transfer. NEXAFS on metallic multilayers has received less attention than alloys because of the difficulty in synthesizing multilayers with controllability up to the monolayer level and because there is little difference between the signal from the bulk and from longer period (and gt; 30(angstrom)) multilayers. For high-quality short period multilayers, however, the difference is clear. This is highlighted in a study of short period Co/Cu multilayers, where the electronic density of states of Cu in Cu/Co greatly differed from that of bulk Cu. The difference was attributed to both charge transfer and band structure changes of the interface atoms. Short period Cu/Fe was the subject of another NEXAFS study, where the signal from a periodic Cu(3(angstrom))/Fe(10(angstrom)) multilayer was compared with that of a periodic Cu(10(angstrom))/Fe(3(angstrom)) multilayer. The difference was attributed to the different structure of the Cu in each sample. Cu was BCC in one and was FCC in the other

[en] We describe initial experiments to produce soft x-ray interferograms using a collisionally-pumped Y soft x-ray laser at 155 A as the probe source. Successful operation of the interferometer requires tight alignment tolerances: spatial overlap of the beams to within 50 μm, and temporal overlap to within a 150 μm path difference. Beamsplitter vibrations were found to be a strong factor influencing the quality of the interferograms

[en] We have imaged laser-accelerated foils and exploding foils on the few-micron scale using an yttrium x-ray laser (155 A, 80 eV, ∼200 ps duration) and a multilayer mirror imaging system. At the maximum magnification of 30, resolution was of order one micron. The images were side-on radiographs of the foils. Accelerated foils showed significant filamentation on the rear-side (away from the driving laser) of the foil, although the laser beam was smoothed. In addition to the narrow rear-side filamentation, some shots revealed larger-scale plume-like structures on the front (driven) side of the Al foil. These plumes seem to be little-affected by beam smoothing and are likely a consequence of Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The experiments were carried out at the Nova two-beam facility

[en] We have developed a software package for reconstruction of quasimonochromatic images from a multiple monochromatic x-ray imager for inertial confinement fusion implosions. The instrument consists of a pinhole array, a multilayer Bragg mirror, and an image detector. The pinhole array projects hundreds of images onto the detector after reflection off the multilayer Bragg mirror, which introduces spectral dispersion along the reflection axis. The quasimonochromatic images of line emissions and continuum emissions can be used for measurement of temperature and density maps of implosion plasmas. In this article, we describe a computer-aided processing technique for systematic reconstruction of quasimonochromatic images from raw data. This technique provides flexible spectral bandwidth selection and allows systematic subtraction of continuum emission from line emission images