Project description
A disruptive solution for lighter mirrors in telescopes and solar technologies
The mirrors currently used in telescopes and solar concentrators are heavy, weighing half a metric tonne per square metre, making them costly and difficult to stabilise. This weight is necessary for maintaining the mirror's shape and ability to withstand various environmental conditions. In this context, the EIC-funded Live-Mirror project proposes a novel disruptive solution: lightweight mirrors made of fire-polished glass-coated sheets and actively supported by electro-active polymer-based actuators. By using advanced manufacturing techniques and real-time control systems these 'live mirrors' offer superior optical quality at a fraction of the weight and cost, potentially revolutionising telescope and solar energy technologies. The project promises to pave the way for large and very precise telescopes and innovative solar energy systems through additive manufacturing and precise slumping techniques.
Objective
We propose to develop ultralight, self-correcting mirrors for use in the next generation of large optical telescopes and solar energy concentrators. Presently, the best mirrors have a density of about one-half a metric-ton per square-meter or more in order to provide the stiffness which is necessary to keep the optical shape under the variable conditions given by the changing gravity vector as the telescopes track a position on the sky, as well as to withstand variable wind conditions. We intend to replace such a massive mirror with a sandwich of very light, optically perfect, fire-glass (window pane) coated sheets stiffened with layers of Electro-active polymers that can be deposited through additive manufacturing 3D printers. The sheets of glass will be heated to ~800o C in a pressurized, tailored made kiln and allowed to relax (their backside) onto a suitable mould, cast to a predetermined off-axis aspheric (parabolic) shape, while keeping the temperature below the de-vitrification temperature of the glass thus preserving the excellent optical surface quality of fire-glass window pane. Using the addressable energy of the Electro-active polymers will provide not only dynamically self-controlled stiffness but also variable push-pull action real-time multi-sensing controlled and calibrated in order to keep the optical surface to a live-perfect shape under general operating conditions. These Live-Mirrors shall provide optical surfaces of as high a quality as those of the current best telescopes but with larger dynamic range and a reduction in weight and cost of more than one order of magnitude. Such mirrors will allow the development of 50-100 meter-class telescopes as well as of the next generation of space telescopes. On the ground, they will also offer very low cost options for the next generation of solar energy concentrators and for antennas used for optical communications.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France