Diamond Turning and Polishing of Copper Mirrors.

This program was designed to investigate the surface properties of micromachined copper mirrors. A total of twenty-one mirrors were evaluated for total integrated scatter wavelength 6328A, surface roughness measurements using a FECO fringes of equal chromatic order interferometer, surface absorption measurements wavelength 10.6 micrometers, and surface figure wavelength 6328A. Mirror fabrication was divided into three phases 1 micromachining and evaluation of seven copper mirrors, 2 micromachining and conventional polishing of seven mirrors, and 3 evaluation and conventional polishing of another vendors micromachined mirrors. The results of this study show that micromachining copper mirrors produces low absorption surfaces 0.72 percent at 10.6 micrometers, and polishing micromachined surfaces yields surfaces equivalent to conventionally ground and polished samples. Author