Quasi-mosaicity of (311) planes in silicon and its use in a Laue lens with high-focusing power

(311) curved planes can be exploited for efficiently focus hard X-rays. With this purpose, a self-standing bent crystal was manufactured at the Sensor and Semiconductor Laboratory of Ferrara (Italy). The crystal was designed as an optical component for a X-ray concentrator such as a Laue lens. The curvature of (311) planes was obtained through the quasi-mosaic effect. The diffraction efficiency of the sample was tested at the Institut Laue Langevin of Grenoble (France) by using a collimated monochromatic X-ray beam. This was the first prove of the diffraction properties of (311) quasi-mosaic planes. Diffraction efficiency resulted 35% with a 182 keV X-ray beam, in agreement with the theoretical expectation. It corresponded to a reflectivity of 33%. While the chosen orientation is not the most performing lying of planes, it can be used, in addition to smaller-index planes, in order to raise the total effective area of a Laue lens. To quantify it, a Laue lens based on quasi-mosaic silicon and germanium crystals, exploiting (111), (422) and (311) diffracting planes, was achieved and simulated with the LaueGen code.