According to the Science and Technology Daily, large-diameter high-precision aspheric optical mirrors are the core components of high-resolution space-to-surface observation, deep-space exploration and astronomical observing systems. Their manufacturing technical level is related to national defense security, national economic construction, and basic scientific research capabilities. Words are of great significance.
As a highly stable optical mirror material, silicon carbide materials have lighter weight, higher specific stiffness and thermal stability. However, due to the limitations of relevant technical conditions, they have been published internationally for a long time. The reported maximum size of a single silicon carbide mirror is only 1.5 meters.
Zhang Xuejun, deputy director of the Changchun Institute of Optics and Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, led the team to take a different approach, experienced hundreds of experimental explorations and process validations, broke through a number of key techniques for mirror blank preparation, and established a large-diameter silicon carbide mirror blank manufacturing platform, which was successfully developed for visible light. Imaging of 2 m, 2.4 m, 3 m diameter single silicon carbide mirror blank and 4 m diameter integral silicon carbide mirror blank.
The development of mirror blanks is only the first step. As the core component of large-caliber optoelectronic equipment, it has extremely high requirements on the surface accuracy and surface quality of the mirror surface. 'Equivalent to flattening a piece of land of Beijing size, southeast corner and The height difference in the northwest corner is within plus or minus a few millimeters. Under such an accuracy requirement, the structure must be ensured. ' Zhang Xuejun introduced that while making breakthroughs in the preparation of silicon carbide materials, they also overcome the other two technologies. Bottleneck - large diameter silicon carbide aspheric processing detection and high performance modification, coating.
At the meeting, the project of '4m-order high-precision SiC aspheric mirror integrated manufacturing system' undertaken by Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences passed the acceptance test. The acceptance expert group believes that the project has developed a large-caliber series of mirrors, which is in China. A major technological breakthrough in the field of large aperture optical manufacturing.
