High quality imaging system of telescopes in astronomy requires innovations to remove or correct the mid-spatial frequency (MSF) ripples on the mirror surface of lightweight optics. When the telescope is sent to the space, its launch mass is the key point to limit its collecting area. Therefore, the lightweight optics (100-150 mum thick electroplated nickel/cobalt, or 200-400 mum thick glass) is considered to be employed. However, the surface profile of the thin optical surface can't be polished to extremely high accuracy. Instead, the profile is expected to be corrected by applying voltage or magnetic field to drive the coating of smart materials (piezo or magnetostrictive materials) on the back side of the mirrors. During the process, the surface profile correction by the local stress on the 2-d surface is challenging. Both the measurements and the theoretical prediction of the surface profiles after correction are investigated.;As a first step in the development of tools to predict the deformation of the coated glass strip samples (20x5x0.1 mm), one commercial magnetically smart material (MSM) was deposited on the samples by the magnetron sputtering method. One experimental setup was established to measure the deflections of these coated samples under an external magnetic field by Zygo NewView white light interferometry (WLI). These deflections agreed well with the results from the developed analytical and numerical analysis under various magnetic field strengths.;In the further research, more efforts were made to analyze the full three-dimensional deformation behavior of MSM thin films on a square glass sample (50x50x0.2 mm). With the magnetic field applied, the 2-d surface profile of the coated glass sample was measured by WLI. To better study the deformation of the sample coated with MSMs, a finite element method (FEM) and a theoretical model were developed to predict the deformation of the sample with local misfit strains. The results calculated form the FEM and the theoretical model agreed well with the experimental results.;Finally, some work was done on the NiCo substrate coated with MSMs to preliminarily verify its capability to hold the deformation after the external magnetic field was removed.
展开▼
