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Hard X-ray multilayer coated astronomical mirrors by e-beam deposition

A number of X-ray astronomical missions of near future (Constellation-X, XEUS, Simbol-X) will make use of hard X-rays (10-100 keV) optics with broad-band multilayer coatings. A possible technique under development is based on an extension of the already tested replication of a coated mandrel by e-beam deposition and nickel electroforming already successfully used for the soft (0.1 - 10 keV) X-ray mirrors of the Beppo-SAX, XMM, JET-X/Swift missions. In this case graded multilayers are deposited and replicated from the mandrel replicated instead of a single layer. The roughness reduction in order to improve the coating reflectivity could be achieved by an ion assistance during the e-beam deposition. The e-beam deposition with ion assistance is a technique that allows to reach comparable (if not better) smoothness levels with respect to other methods (e.g. ion sputtering), taking the advantage of a stress mitigation between the layers and of a further improvement in reflectivity due to the low density of the e-beam evaporated Carbon, which is used as bilayer spacer. In this paper we discuss the adopted deposition technique and its implementation: we present topographic (AFM) tests and X-ray reflectivity tests performed on preliminary samples.