Improved release coatings for electroformed x-ray optics

X-ray astronomy grazing incidence telescopes use the principle of nested shells to maximize the collecting area. Some of the more recent missions, such as XMM-Newton [1], have used an electroformed nickel replication (ENR) process [2] to fabricate the mirror shells. Upcoming missions, such as Spectrum-Röntgen-Gamma [3] and Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager [4], also use the electroforming process to fabricate nested shell grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. We present recent results on fabrication of replicas with multilayer coatings from Wolter-1 mandrels using a new hardcoat release material to simplify and improve this electroforming process.