Absolute photoionization cross-section measurements for a mixture of ground and metastable states of Xe4+, Xe5+, and Xe6+ are reported in the photon energy range of 4d-nf transitions, which occur within or adjacent to the 13.5 nm window for extreme ultraviolet lithography light source development. The reported values allow the quantification of opacity effects in xenon plasmas due to these 4d-4f autoionizing states. The oscillator strengths for the 4d-4f and 4d-5f transitions in Xeq+ (q=1-6) ions are calculated using nonrelativistic Hartree-Fock and random phase approximations. These are compared with published experimental values for Xe+ to Xe3+ and with the values obtained from the present experimental cross-section measurements for Xe4+ to Xe6+. The calculations assisted in the determination of the metastable content in the ion beams for Xe5+T and Xe6+. The experiments were performed by merging a synchrotron photon beam generated by an undulator beamline of the Advanced Light Source with an ion beam produced by an electron cyclotron resonance ion source.

We introduce a new technique using resonant soft x-ray scattering for characterizing heterogeneous chemical structure at nanometer length scales in polymers, biological material, and other soft matter. Resonant enhancements bring new contrast mechanisms and increased sensitivity to bridge a gap between bond-specific contrast in chemical sensitive imaging and the higher spatial resolution of traditional small-angle scattering techniques. We illustrate sensitivity to chemical bonding with the resonant scattering near the carbon K edge from latex spheres of differing chemistry and sizes. By tuning to x-ray absorption resonances associated with particular carbon-carbon or carbon-oxygen bonds we can isolate the scattering from different phases in a 2-phase mixture. We then illustrate this increased scattering contrast with a study of the templating process to form nanometer scale pores in 100 nm thick polymer films.