Invited Article: High-quality blazed gratings through synergy between e-beam lithography and robust characterization techniques

Maintaining the highest quality and output of photon science in the VUV-, EUV-, soft-, and tender-x-ray energy ranges requires high-quality blazed profile gratings. Currently, their availability is critical due to technological challenges and limited manufacturing resources. In this work, we show the developed method for manufacturing blazed gratings relevant for synchrotron-based science by means of electron-beam lithography (EBL). We investigate different parameters influencing the optical performance of blazed profile gratings and develop a robust process for the manufacturing of high-quality blazed gratings using polymethyl methacrylate as a high resolution positive tone resist and ion beam etching. Finally, we demonstrate excellent agreement in efficiency between the produced EBL grating and the theoretical prediction.