Low-stress soldering technique used to assemble an optical system for aerospace missions
2017
A high-precision opto-mechanical breadboard for a lens mount has been assembled by means of a laserbased
soldering process called Solderjet Bumping; which thanks to its localized and minimized input
of thermal energy, is well suited for the joining of optical components made of fragile and brittle
materials such as glasses. An optical element made of a silica lens and a titanium barrel has been studied
to replicate the lens mounts of the afocal beam expander used in the LIDAR instrument (ATLID) of the
ESA EarthCare Mission, whose aim is to monitor molecular and particle-based back-scattering in order
to analyze atmosphere composition. Finally, a beam expander optical element breadboard with a silica
lens and a titanium barrel was assembled using the Solderjet Bumping technology with
Sn96.5Ag3Cu0.5 SAC305 alloy resulting in a low residual stress (<1 MPa) on the joining areas, a low
light-depolarization (<0.2 %) and low distortion (wave-front error measurement < 5 nm rms) on the
assemblies. The devices also successfully passed humidity, thermal-vacuum, vibration, and shock tests
with conditions similar to the ones expected for the ESA EarthCare mission and without altering their
optical performances.
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