Astrileux Corporation — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S2

Description

We propose a new platform of highly reflective tunable, multispectral, normal incidence, Extreme Ultravioletnbsp; (EUV) reflective coatings with a wavelength range 10-40 nm. The proposed innovation enables next generation EUV telescopic designs with higher magnification, high cadence, larger field of view and better imaging resolution using smaller EUV wavelengths. As humans extend their reach into space, understanding the nature of solar activity and the interconnected Earth-Sun system, as well as high resolution mapping of distant planets such as Pluto, and other potentially new exoplanets are needed to provide knowledge and predictive capabilities essential to the future use and exploration of space. New telescopes such THEIA or ATLAST or upgrades to the Heliophysics Hi-C imager will benefit from this technology allows more flexible telescopic design, lower cost, solar durable coatings with longer lifetimes and reduced cooling requirements and thermal and technical payloads. A single coating will be designed to have a reflective electromagnetic resonance for between 1-3 EUV wavelengths, with a peak wavelength that is tunable in the lower range of EUV wavelength regime, and individually observable by filtered detectors. Unlike traditional coating approaches, which have a single resonance for a given wavelength by exchanging the interplay of bilayer materials in a Bragg multilayer architecture for a limited set of wavelengths, we propose to use a single foundational material as the platform for all coatings, and controlling the design of the coatings to ultimately achieve highly reflective electromagnetic resonances at multiple different wavelengths tunable within the 10-40 nm regime to achieve multispectral imaging.