The present work demonstrates the potential applicability of additive manufacturing to X-Ray refractive nano-lenses. A compound refractive lens with a radius of 5 µm was produced by the two-photon polymerization induced lithography. It was successfully tested at the X-ray microfocus laboratory source and a focal spot of 5 μm was measured. An amorphous nature of polymer material combined with the potential of additive technologies may result in a significantly enhanced focusing performance compared to the best examples of modern X-ray compound refractive lenses.

X-ray refractive lenses are widely used optical devices at today synchrotron X-ray sources. In the present paper we demonstrate negative influence of the X-ray diffraction on optical properties of monocrystalline X-ray refractive lenses in operation. Several types of single-crystal diamond lenses were studied in X-ray spectroscopy mode at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. X-rays were propagating through individual lenses, stacked together in a row, and the transmitted intensity was measured at different energies. While using the stack of crystallographically co-aligned lenses, we obtained the strong maximal reduction of 35% in an intensity of the outgoing signal. The effect was caused by diffraction losses in the single-crystal diamond and also called "X-ray glitch." The magnitude of the effect was then minimized down to $10% by use of stacks with different crystallographic orientation of individual lenses inside. At the same time, X-ray glitches did not affect any focal spot's size or shape while only arousing the darkening of the focal spot at exact energies of X-ray glitches.

Single‐crystal diamond stands out among all the candidate materials that could be exploited to fabricate compound refractive lenses (CRLs) owing to its extremely stable properties. Among all related experimental features, beam divergence, χ‐angles relative to the incoming beam in Eulerian geometry and different positions of the X‐ray beam relative to the lens geometry may influence the transmission energy spectrum of CRLs. In addition, the orientation of the single‐crystal diamond sample may also affect the glitches significantly. To verify these initial assumptions, two experiments, an energy scan and an ω‐scan, were set up by employing a polished diamond plate consisting of five biconcave lenses. The results show that beam divergence does not affect the spectrum, nor do χ‐angles when ω is set to zero. Nevertheless, different incident positions have an appreciable effect on the transmission spectrum, in particular the `strengths' of the glitches. This is attributed to absorption. The ω‐scan setup is capable of determining the so‐called orientation matrix, which may be used to predict both `energy positions' and `strengths' of the glitches.

X-ray optics made of single-crystal materials are widely used at most of the X-ray sources due to the outstanding properties. The main drawback of such optics—the diffraction losses, also known as glitches of intensity in the energy spectrum of the transmitted/diffracted beam. To be able to handle this negative effect, one needs a reliable way to simulate the glitch spectrum in any configuration. Here, we demonstrate the way of precisely determining the crystallographic orientation and unit cell parameters of optical elements just from a small glitch spectrum with the consequent possibility of simulating glitches for any energy.

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