Abstract
Monocrystalline silicon as an x-ray mirror substrate material promises significant improvements over the x- ray mirror technologies used to date, since it is mechanically stiff, stress-free, highly thermally conductive, and widely commercially available. Producing highly accurate and lightweight x-ray mirrors from monocrystalline silicon requires a unique and specialized manufacturing process capable of producing mirrors quickly and cost effectively. The identification, development, and testing of this process is the focus of the work described in this proceeding. Monocrystalline silicon blocks were obtained, and a variety of processes (wire electro-discharge machining, etching, polishing) were applied to generate an accurate and stress-free cylindrical or Wolter-I mirror surface. The mirror surface is then sliced off at a thickness of <1 mm and further processed to yield a mirror segment with <1 arcsecond RMS slope errors. Furthermore, our experiments suggest that this mirror production process requires ~2 days to produce a mirror segment and is easily integrated into a cost-reducing parallel processing scheme. Presently, there is strong evidence that the mirror production process described in this paper will meet the stringent requirements of future x-ray missions.
