The stressed-mirror polishing process has been successfully deployed to manufacture Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope coronagraph mirrors. This process combines a simple warping system with an optimized thickness distribution of the mirror’s substrates, allowing it to warp them into the required Off-Axis Parabola parameters. This way, the polishing process uses full-sized tools, avoiding generating undesired high spatial frequency sub-aperture tool marks. The smoothness of the surface is then worked with a super-polishing process, lowering the roughness to a few Angstroms.
The research we present is done in the post-RST technology maturation roadmap frame. The Habitable Worlds Observatory requirements are so drastic that the performance of the stressed mirror polishing process needs to be improved to gain surface roughness.
Therefore, synthesizing nanoparticle slurries seems to be an alternative to aiming for a low roughness value. In this paper, we present the nanoparticle production process, the results obtained on the mirror prototypes we produced, and the roadmap for the production of hyperpolished OAPs.
A new step was taken in the development of the Chemical-Mechanical mirror polishing (CMP) manufacturing process for so-called “hyper-polished” optics. The main objective was to explore the limits of hyper polishing with the synthesis of Silica oxide and Cerium oxide nanoparticle slurries. Better control of the size and morphology of the synthesized SiO2 and CeO2 nanoparticles in the slurries will give us information on the surface chemistry and the interaction that happens while polishing but it will also allow us to take a step forward to meet the challenge of reducing the surface roughness below the Angstrom.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.