Intrinsic roughness and interfaces of Cr/Be multilayers

The structures of Cr/Be multilayer mirror interfaces are investigated using X-ray reflectometry, diffuse X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy. The combination of these methods makes it possible to separate the contributions of roughness and interlayer diffusion/intermixing for each sample. In the range of period thicknesses of 2.26–0.8 nm, it is found that the growth roughness of the Cr/Be multilayer mirrors does not depend on the period thickness and is ∼0.2 nm. The separation of roughness and diffuseness allows estimation of layer material intermixing and the resulting drop in the optical contrast, which is from 0.85 to 0.17 in comparison with an ideally sharp structure.