Review of capillary x‐ray optics from the 2nd International Capillary Optics Meeting

The 2nd International Capillary Optics Meeting (ICOM2001) took place at the University of Antwerp, 17–21 June 2001. One of the meeting aims was to provide a forum to review the progress in x‐ray optics made from monocapillaries, polycapillaries and waveguides. These optics are often employed to better match the properties of a tube or synchrotron x‐ray source to x‐ray applications such as diffraction, fluorescence, spectroscopy, etc. Many of the applications involve small beams on the size scale from 30 nm to 50µm. The focus on the initial capillary optics meeting 5 years ago at Cornell University was on how to make and characterize optics. At this meeting, however, the highlights were more centered on how to use optics in interesting applications. Steady progress has been made in the manufacture of higher performance optics and this improvement in technical performance is continuing to drive the interest in commercialization and utilization of these novel forms of x‐ray optics in many areas of science and technology. This paper gives a brief overview of the meeting presentations and also describes some of the recent progress in capillary optics manufacture and application at CHESS at Cornell University. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.