Optical Analysis of Ion-beam Figuring Polished Silicon Wafers

Poster Image
Optical Analysis of Ion-beam Figuring Polished Silicon Wafers Poster
Poster Session
D
Poster Number
02
Project Author(s)
Kaseylin Yoke
Institution
Oregon State University | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Internship
Project Description

NASA’s direct imaging of exoplanets missions and projects such as WFIRST and LUVOIR require fabricated coronagraph masks to control scattering and diffraction of light. In this study, we intend to enhance the pathfinder masks for High-contrast Imager for Complex Aperture Telescope (HiCAT) at Space Telescope Institute (STScI) while assessing their optical performance independently. The fabrication of pupil mask involves silicon wafers to be sliced and polished at λ/20 using recently procured ion beam figuring (IBF) system where the absorbent region will be black-silicon etched using Oxford Instrument Etching system currently under commission at the GSFC Detector Characterization Lab. A comparison between pre- and post-IBF polished silicon wafers done in Summer 2019 showed that IBF polishing greatly decreases the surface figure error on the silicon wafers. In this study, the results from Summer 2019 will be verified and corrected. Additionally, a Zernike polynomial decomposition will be performed on each wafer to determine the exact surface aberrations present.