The relative x-ray collection efficiency, spatial resolution, and spectral resolution of spherically-bent quartz, mica, and germanium crystals were compared with cylindrically and spherically-bent highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and spherically-bent highly annealed pyrolytic graphite (HAPG) mosaic crystals. The crystals were characterized using Mn-K-α 1 (5898.8 eV) and Mn-K-α 2 (5887.6 eV) x-rays generated from a Manson x-ray source. The HOPG and HAPG crystals had about (10–100)× higher x-ray collection efficiency than the quartz, mica, and germanium crystals. However, good spatial resolutions were obtained with the quartz (49 μm), mica (61 μm), and germanium (275 μm) crystals, while the HOPG and HAPG crystals provided no useful spatial resolving power. Deconvolution of the spectral broadening due to the Mn-K-α 1 intrinsic width (2.33 eV), source size (320 μm), and image plate detector resolution (63 μm) demonstrated the spectral resolutions ( E /Δ E) of the quartz (3800–6600), mica (4600), and germanium (3400–4500) crystals to be considerably higher than that of the HOPG (1200–2400) and HAPG (2500) crystals.
