In situ removal of carbon contamination from a chromium-coated mirror: ideal optics to suppress higher-order harmonics in the carbon K-edge region

Carbon-free chromium-coated optics are ideal in the carbon K-edge region (280–330 eV) because the reflectivity of first-order light is larger than that of gold-coated optics while the second-order harmonics (560–660 eV) are significantly suppressed by chromium L-edge and oxygen K-edge absorption. Here, chromium-, gold- and nickel-coated mirrors have been adopted in the vacuum ultraviolet and soft X-ray branch beamline BL-13B at the Photon Factory in Tsukuba, Japan. Carbon contamination on the chromium-coated mirror was almost completely removed by exposure to oxygen at a pressure of 8 × 10(−2) Pa for 1 h under irradiation of non-monochromated synchrotron radiation. The pressure in the chamber recovered to the order of 10(−7) Pa within a few hours. The reflectivity of the chromium-coated mirror of the second-order harmonics in the carbon K-edge region (560–660 eV) was found to be a factor of 0.1–0.48 smaller than that of the gold-coated mirror.