Development of grazing-incidence multilayer mirrors by direct Ni electroforming replication: A status report

The Ni electroforming replication process has been used successfully by Beppo-SAX, JET-X/SWIFT, and XMM-Newton, to produce their gold-coated X-ray mirrors. The important feature of the technique is that, also with thin substrates, it is possible to achieve a good angular resolution, which is important for obtaining high signal-to-noise ratios in deep observations and imaging extended sources, while the assembly and integration of the monolithic shells is a relatively easy task. Two approaches can be used for the up grade of this technique also to the case of mirrors with multilayer coating, to be used in future hard X-ray missions: i) the direct replication of the mirror shell, after the deposition of the multilayer film on the master (mandrel) surface followed by the electroforming of the Ni walls, ii) the application of the multilayer film to the internal surface of Ni mirror shells, previously realized by replication. In this paper the last results achieved in Italy in the context of an activity aiming at the development of the former of the two methods will be presented and discussed.