On August 12, 2021, the list of winners of the Science and Technology Award of the Chinese Society for Instrumentation and Meters in 2021 was announced. The project "Large Scale and High Efficiency Ultraviolet and X-Ray Thin Film Device Technology and Application" completed by Zhanshan Wang, Qiushi Huang, Zhong Zhang, Runze Qi, Shengzhen Yi, and Wenbin Li from the extreme ultraviolet, X-ray, and neutron directions of the team stood out from many projects and won the first prize of the Chinese Society for Instrumentation and Meters Technology Invention Award.
Extreme ultraviolet and X-ray (XUV) optical technology plays a significant supporting role in solving cutting-edge scientific problems, advancing national defense equipment, and developing high-tech industries. The XUV thin film device is the core of its optical system, with a film thickness of only a few nanometers to less than 1 nanometer. Due to the limitations of understanding the formation laws of interface defects in nano thin films and preparation techniques, there have been three major problems in XUV thin film devices: low reflectivity, small device size, and poor diffraction efficiency, which cannot meet the needs of major scientific engineering construction such as synchrotron radiation light sources and strong field plasma diagnostics. Innovation is urgently needed.
After 20 years, the project team has created a decoupled and precise characterization method for interface defects in XUV thin film devices, revealing the formation laws of three major defects: atomic uneven crystallization, diffusion mixing, and chemical reaction; Invented interface defect control technologies for XUV thin film devices, such as atomic level barrier layers based on different materials and argon nitrogen mixed reaction sputtering, which solved the problems of uneven crystallization, diffusion mixing, and effective suppression of chemical reactions in the film layer, and significantly improved the reflectivity of XUV thin film devices; Invented large-scale XUV film growth technologies such as tilted particle control and precise film thickness control, breaking through the control challenges of interface structure and film thickness in the growth of large-sized nano films; Invented the complex growth technology of XUV nano films on micro/nano structures, achieving precise construction of two-dimensional multi-layer film gratings and significantly improving the diffraction efficiency of grating devices. This project has been granted 16 invention patents and published 72 SCI papers; The developed XUV thin film device has been successfully applied in domestic and foreign research institutions such as Diamond Light Source in the UK, BESSY-II Light Source in Germany, Shanghai Light Source, Beijing Light Source, and China Academy of Engineering Physics; In the past three years, direct economic benefits have exceeded 60 million yuan. The appraisal committee organized by the Chinese Instrument and Meter Society, with Academician Zhuang Songlin as the director and Academician Jiang Huilin and Academician Tan Jiubin as the deputy directors, unanimously believes that the overall performance of this project achievement has reached the international advanced level, with the XUV film reflectivity and multi-layer film grating efficiency reaching the international leading level.
