SBIR-STTR Award

Advancement of space surveillance and seeker system performance for cryogenic applications will be accomplished through increased use of silicon carbide mirrors. One unknown is the attachment method needed for SiC mirrors and optical benches with differing thermal properties. This Phase I effort seeks to evaluate innovative attachment concepts for SiC mirrors to optical structures with differing thermal properties. The increased understanding of the mounting methods for silicon carbide will allow the use of full - scale silicon carbide optical components that meet requirements of the ARTEMIS program for responsive-space and other future programs.

In this Phase II program, POCO will demonstrate the feasibility of the marterial system - POCO’s SuperSic® as an excellent canidate for cryogenic optical applications. This effort will demonstrate through the use of cryogenic testing, a select SiC mirror and mirror-mounting design using an already operational system as a baseline. The effort will focus on the unique issues involved in mounting a mid-sized SiC mirror to an optical structure with significantly different CTE. Leveraging on previous experiments with SiC mirrors mounted to SiC optical structures, POCO will demonstrate the feasibility of mounting SiC mirrors to aluminum optical structures while maintaining necessary optical performance. A specific mirror will be selected by AEDC and POCO to design, fabricate and test. Mirror specifications and mounting interfaces to AEDC optical bench, will be defined. The technical objectives are to complete the design of the mirror system components and produce manufacturing drawings for the aluminum components and the CVC SiC process and precision finishing.

Keywords:
Silicon Carbide, Optics, Attachment, Cryogenic, Aspheric Mirror, Thermal, Coefficient And Aluminum Bench.