Silicon Pore Optics X-ray mirror development for the ATHENA telescope

ATHENA, the largest space-based X-ray telescope to be flown by the European Space Agency, uses a new modular technology to assemble its 2.5 m diameter lens. The lens will consist of several hundreds of smaller X-ray lenslets, called mirror modules, which each consist of up to 76 stacked mirror pairs. Those mirror modules are arranged in circles in a large optics structure and will focus X-ray photons with an energy of 0.5 to 10 keV at a distance of 12 m onto the detectors of ATHENA. The point-spread function (PSF) of the optics shall achieve a half-energy width (HEW) of 5 '', with an effective area of about 1.4 m(2) at an energy of 1 keV, corresponding to several hundred m(2) of super-polished mirrors with a roughness of about 0.3 nm and a thickness of down to 110 lam. Silicon Pore Optics (SPO), using the highest-grade double-side polished 300 mm wafers commercially available, have been invented to enable such next generation X-ray telescopes. SPO allows the cost-effective production of high-resolution, large area X-ray optics by using all the advantages that mono-crystalline silicon and the mass production processes of the semiconductor industry provide. SPO has also shown to be a versatile technology that can be further developed for gamma-ray optics, medical applications and for materials research. This paper will present the status of the technology and of the mass production capabilities, show latest performance results and discuss the next steps in the development.