Development of Near Infrared Arrays for Space Application

Computer Science – Performance

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Proposed infrared space astronomy missions, e.g. SIRTF, require detector arrays with extremely high sensitivity. It is a goal of these missions to achieve background limited performance at all wavelengths. Especially critical is the spectral region around 3 microns, where the zodiacal dust emission and scattering reaches a minimum, and where there are no other natural background sources, and where a cooled space telescope provides negligible background. The extremely low background levels near 3 microns place stringent requirements on the performance of 2 - 5 microns detector arrays. The dark current, in order to be less than the current generated by the 3 microns zodiacal emission at a spectral resolution of 100, must be less than 0.1 e(-) /s/pixel. The detector noise must be less than the noise given by fluctuations in the number of zodiacal background photons (< 9 e(-) /pixel). The quantum efficiency (QE) must be high (> 90%). The arrays should be radiation hard; have minimal image latency; be extremely stable; be photometrically accurate; and not exhibit anomalous behaviors. Santa Barbara Research Center (SBRC) has been developing InSb 256 times 256 arrays with the goal of meeting these specifications. We have optimized the operation of the SBRC arrays, and have written sampling algorithms to improve the noise performance. We present recent data on InSb arrays, mated to CRC 463 and 590 multiplexers. The InSb material was specified by the SIRTF Infrared Array Camera team. We have demonstrated excellent performance of the SBRC arrays: e.g. one array has > 80% QE, < 1 e(-) /s/pixel, and 14 e(-) read noise at 29K. Another array has been demonstrated at < 0.1 e(-) /s/pixel dark current. The gated arrays are radiation hard, but exhibit image latency. Arrays with SBRC's new gateless passivation do not exhibit image latency. The best of these arrays has been used in the Third Generation Rochester Infrared Camera at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory: Astronomical images obtained with the new array will be presented.

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