cosine is world leading in the development of novel high energy optics technology. The Silicon Pore Optics technology (SPO), developed by cosine in cooperation with the European Space Agency, offers significant advantages for a variety of applications.
Silicon wafer bonding – Silicon Pore Optics
Bonding and stacking many silicon wafers on top of each other is a technology initially developed by cosine in cooperation with ESA for a novel type of light weight X-ray lens. Our specialized fully automated stacking robots can elastically deform and directly bond tens of patterned silicon wafers with micro-meter accuracy on top of each other, creating many potential shapes and structures for applications such as X-ray imaging and beyond. The silicon plates can be coated, grooved, wedged and structured with many different patterns. The stacking robots have been developed in house and combine standard wafer industry technology with novel metrology solutions to achieve high yields at very high accuracy.
The Silicon Pore Optics consist of single crystal silicon mirrors to focus X-rays. Silicon Pore Optics use the fact that standard double sided polished silicon wafers from the semiconductor industry have excellent properties for making X-ray mirrors. By using standard industry tools, cosine can shape the best quality silicon wafers and process them to form mirror segments.
This technology breaks the traditional assumption that thinner mirrors have to result in less imaging quality. By making use of the inherent stiffness of porous structures, very thin mirrors can be produced in a solid structure.
A result is an amazingly large surface area at very low mass, very high accuracy and unparalleled cost-effectiveness.
Silicon Laue Lens components – optics for very hard X-rays and Gamma rays
In the very high energy range, one cannot use reflective surfaces to focus soft gamma rays, as the maximum reflective angle becomes too small. In this case using a Laue lens is the preferred solution. Using Bragg reflection and bent silicon crystals, imaging can be achieved where it is not otherwise possible. Laue lenses can be made using an SPO based technique, where bent and wedged single crystal silicon plates are stacked.
“When even SPOs can no longer focus X-Rays, a Laue Lens still can.”
Silicon Pore Optics technology can be used to realize high-efficiency Laue lens providing focusing power in the soft-gamma domain. A Laue lens concentrates rays using Bragg diffraction in the volume of crystals (the Laue geometry). Silicon Laue lens Components (SiLCs) are similar to SPO stacks of Si plates that have been stacked to freeze their curvature, the main difference is that instead of using ribbed plates which creates pores and allows reflection, the light refracts in the bulk of the chrystal.
SiLCs have been developed in a collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley.
Synchrotron facilities – focus high energy X-rays for experimentation
High-energy optics simulation – quickly determine realistic system performance and features
The high energy optics software simulates X-ray and gamma-ray imaging systems based on grazing incidence scattering using the Monte Carlo technique. The software offers control of the surface properties and scattering processes at each individual interaction. Additionally, the geometry of the surfaces and the imaging system, as well as the incoming beam and the resulting images patterns on the detector surface are fully under control of the user.
Particle contamination
cosine has developed a contactless method, based on the detection and analysis of scattered light, to efficiently measure particles of a few micrometers on highly reflective structured surfaces.
This high-yield technology developed to obtain space qualified bond strength and very high resolution, combines specialised light sources, line CCDs and dedicated image analysis to successfully measure large numbers of silicon substrates in high throughput stacking robots.
Detecting high energy and other radiation
cosine has experience in the detection of high energy radiation in all its forms. Gamma ray and X-ray detection components, complete with computational parts (back end electronics, small sized full computer components capable of space exposure) can all be obtained through cosine. Our expertise includes energy sensing detectors in the X-ray to gamma ray range as well as the EP12, which is a very small back-end system capable of simultaneously managing the data of up to 6 sensors at once, including advanced measurements such as energy sensing. This allows for a combination of multiple different kinds of measurements to be taken simultaneously.
Max Collon
