X-ray diffraction is a very important method to characterize the structure of crystalline material. The technique can typically be used for the lattice parameters analysis of single crystals, or the phase, texture or even stress analysis of polycrystalline materials (like powders). The technique is widely used in research and development applications and its use for production or quality control issues is also growing, benefiting from developments in hardware and software for high throughput capability.

Most of the applications of X-ray diffractometry require a beam with well defined spatial and spectral characteristics. X-ray optics is a critical component for obtaining the required beam specifications at the sample. Multilayer X-ray optics are now widely used in X-ray diffraction due to their balanced performance in terms of divergence, spectral purity, and flux.

Xenocs has set the standard with the introduction of high performance single reflection two-dimensional multilayer X-ray optics that give significant added value in a number of X-ray diffraction applications.