Planar Refractive Lenses Made Of Sic For High Intensity Nanofocusing

We report on the manufacturing and testing of the first nanofocusing refractive lenses made of single-crystal silicon carbide. We introduce the fabrication process based on lithography, followed by deep isotropic etching. The lenses were characterized at the energy of 12 keV at the beamline P06 of the synchrotron radiation source PETRA III. A focal spot of 186 nmx275 nm has been achieved with a lens working distance of 29 mm. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.