Structural characterization of thin layered materials using x-ray standing wave enhanced elastic and inelastic scattering measurements.

By measuring the intensities of the x-ray standing wave induced elastic and inelastic x-ray scattering from thin multilayer structures, we show that structural characterizations of the high and low z (atomic number) material layers can be performed independently. The method has been tested by analyzing the structural properties of an Nb/C/Nb trilayer and an Mo/Si periodic multilayer structure. The results of the x-ray scattering measurements have been compared with those obtained using x-ray reflectivity and conventional x-ray standing wave fluorescence techniques. It has been demonstrated that the present approach is especially suitable for studying multilayer structures comprising low atomic number layers, as it eliminates the requirement of a fluorescence signal, which is very weak in the case of low z materials.