Fabrication of high quality multilayer blazed gratings using ion beam assisted deposition

A method for generating high quality multilayer blazed gratings using ion beam assisted deposition is proposed and analyzed with numerical simulations. Conventional fabrication methods for multilayer blazed gratings are limited by unwanted smoothing of the surface profile during multilayer deposition. By contrast, we demonstrate that our proposed method is capable of producing gratings that retain a nearly ideal blazed grating profile after the deposition of an arbitrary number of layers. Through numerical analysis, we establish the conditions in which this procedure produces a high quality multilayer blazed grating. These gratings would be suitable for use in the extreme ultraviolet or soft X-ray regime. We also discuss how the control parameters may be selected to optimize the gratings formed in an experiment.