Beryllium Optical and Structural Components

Materion Corporation (formerly Brush Engineered Materials) is the world’s primary supplier of beryllium metal, beryllium alloys, and beryllium oxide ceramics for defense, nuclear, and space applications. Beryllium is uniquely valuable for space optics and structures due to its exceptional combination of properties: extremely low density (1.85 g/cm³ — lighter than aluminum), very high stiffness (elastic modulus 287 GPa — 6× stiffer than aluminum), high specific heat, and excellent dimensional stability over a wide temperature range.

Materion manufactures polished beryllium mirrors for space telescopes, Earth observation sensors, and infrared instruments. The James Webb Space Telescope’s 18 primary mirror segments (each 1.32 m across) are made from beryllium — selected because JWST operates at 40 K cryogenic temperature and beryllium’s thermal expansion coefficient at those temperatures is extremely small and predictable. Materion manufactured and polished the JWST mirror segments.

For Earth observation sensors, Materion supplies beryllium scan mirrors for NOAA weather satellites (GOES-R series), which must scan the Earth’s disk every 5–15 minutes with milliradian pointing accuracy. Beryllium’s stiffness-to-weight ratio makes it the only material able to achieve the required scan rates without vibration-induced pointing errors. Materion is headquartered in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.