“Dip-coatings” are a completely new technology for depositing a carbon-based overcoating on the reflecting surface of X-ray mirrors. This simple deposition process is controllable and repeatable, as well as scalable and inexpensive, and can be carried out without the requirement for specialistic equipment or trained personnel. We have considered the use of these coatings on different materials, in particular Ir monolayers and Ir/Cr bilayers, which can be convenient coatings for ATHENA mirrors. We measured the X-ray reflectivity of tens of samples in three different beamlines (one laboratory source and two synchrotron radiation facilities), covering a broad range of angular and energetic ranges. Results are in excellent agreement with the model and show that the technology has a good potential for application to X-ray optics and telescopes. More details can be found in the reference paper.

{"references": ["Cotroneo et al. (2022), \"Dopamine dip-liquid overcoatings for soft x-ray reflectivity enhancement,\" Proc. SPIE 12181, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 1218117, https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630212"]}