X-ray optics are an essential component of nearly all future x-ray astronomy missions. Nickel electroforming of full shell optics is well established and several existing X-ray astronomy missions have used the technique to fabricate Wolter mirror modules. Our innovative approach merges current electroform technology with lower density materials, replacing much of the electroformed nickel with ceramic material which has higher stiffness, higher hardness and lower mass when compared with current electroformed nickel large shell optics. This will lead to future cost-effective missions with large effective area and lightweight optics. Below we describe our approach and present our most recent results.
Romaine et al. (Thu,) studied this question.