Reid Brennen, Michael Hecht, Dean Wiberg, Steven Manion, William Bonivert, Jill Hruby, Marcus Scholz, Timothy Stowe, Thomas Kenny, Keith Jackson, Chantal Khan Malek
We are fabricating sub-collimating X-ray grids that are to be used in an instrument for the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI), a proposed NASA mission. The HESSI instrument consists of twelve rotating pairs of high aspect ratio, high Z grids, each pair of which is separated by 1.7 meters and backed by a single Ge detector. The pitch for these grid pairs ranges from 34 micrometers to 317 micrometers with the grid slit openings being 60% of the pitch. For maximum grid X-ray absorbing with minimum loss of the solar image, the grid thickness-to-grid-slit ratio must be approximately 50:1, resulting in grid thicknesses of 1 to 10 millimeters. For our proof-of-concept grids we are implementing a design in which a 34 micrometers pitch, free-standing PMMA grid is fabricated with 20 micrometers wide slits and an 800 micrometers thickness. Stiffeners that run perpendicular to the grid are placed every 500 micrometers . After exposure and developing, metal, ideally gold, is electrodeposited into the free-standing PMMA grid slits. The PMMA is not removed and the metal in the slits acts as the X-ray absorber grid while the PMMA holds the individual metal pieces in place, the PMMA being nearly transparent to the X-rays coming from the sun. For optimum imaging performance, the root-mean-square pitch of the two grids of each pair must match to within 1 part in 10000 and simultaneous exposures of stacked sheets of PMMA have insured that this requirement is met.
We have developed fine pitch, sub-collimating X-ray grids for an instrument in the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI), a proposed NASA mission. In addition to high- energy X-rays, the instrument requires collimation of photons with energies of less than 4 keV such that free-standing grids are required that have no material between the grid slats. We have fabricated 25 micrometer thick gold grids that can collimate photons from visible light up to 30 keV X-rays. They are 55 millimeters in diameter and have 200 micrometer thick silicon support structures. The fabrication process starts with 200 micrometer thick 3 inch wafers onto which a 50 angstrom chrome, 300 angstrom gold electroplating strike is e-beam evaporated. A 25 micrometer thick optical resist is deposited on the wafers using a low spin rate. The resist is exposed and developed and an oxygen plasma clean is performed to fully strip resist residue from the strike. 25 micrometers of gold is then plated in the resist mold, resulting in a gold grid with photoresist between each gold slat. The wafer is turned over and a 50 micrometer dry resist is patterned such that it has a array of 1 by 4 millimeter openings to the silicon. The silicon is etched through to the chrome/gold strike using a xenon difluoride etching process. Both types of photoresist are removed with acetone followed by a piranha clean and the chrome/gold strike is removed with a hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide chrome etch which also slowly etches gold.
A micromachined chopper has demonstrated modulation of coherent and incoherent light. The chopper uses an electrostatically driven lateral micromotor to actuate a shutter plate across a through-substrate window. Test devices have been fabricated and exhibit operating frequencies ranging from 1 to 31 kHz and have stable deflection amplitudes of 400 μm. Further optimizations of the design are discussed.
A micromachined chopper has demonstrated modulation of coherent and incoherent light. The chopper uses an electro-statically driven lateral micromotor to actuate a shutter plate across a through-substrate window. Test devices have been fabricated and exhibit operating frequencies ranging from 1 to 31 kHz and have stable defection amplitudes of 400 micrometers . Further optimizations of the design are discussed.
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