14 December 2023 Radiation effects on scientific CMOS sensors for X-ray astronomy: I. Proton irradiation
Mingjun Liu, Zhixing Ling, Qinyu Wu, Chen Zhang, Jiaqiang Liu, Zhenlong Zhang, Weimin Yuan, Shuang-Nan Zhang
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensors are a competitive choice for future X-ray astronomy missions. Typically, CMOS sensors on space astronomical telescopes are exposed to a high dose of irradiation. We investigate the impact of irradiation on the performance of two scientific CMOS (sCMOS) sensors between −30 ° C and 20 ° C at high gain mode (7.5 × ), including the bias map, readout noise, dark current, conversion gain, and energy resolution. The two sensors are irradiated with 50 MeV protons with a total dose of 5.3 × 1010 p · cm − 2. After the exposure, the bias map, readout noise, and conversion gain at various temperatures are not significantly degraded, nor is the energy resolution at −30 ° C. However, after the exposure the dark current has increased by hundreds of times, and for every 20 ° C increase in temperature, the dark current also increases by an order of magnitude. Therefore, at room temperature, the fluctuations of the dark currents dominate the noise and lead to a serious degradation of the energy resolution. Moreover, among the 4 k × 4 k pixels, there are about 100 pixels whose bias at 50 ms has changed by more than 10 DN ( ∼ 18 e), and about 10 pixels whose readout noise has increased by over 15 e at −30 ° C. Fortunately, the influence of the dark current can be reduced by decreasing the integration time, and the degraded pixels can be masked by regular analysis of the dark images. Some future X-ray missions will likely operate at −30 ° C, under which the dark current is too small to significantly affect the X-ray performance. Our investigations show the high tolerance of the sCMOS sensors for proton radiation and prove their suitability for X-ray astronomy applications.

© 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Mingjun Liu, Zhixing Ling, Qinyu Wu, Chen Zhang, Jiaqiang Liu, Zhenlong Zhang, Weimin Yuan, and Shuang-Nan Zhang "Radiation effects on scientific CMOS sensors for X-ray astronomy: I. Proton irradiation," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 9(4), 046003 (14 December 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.9.4.046003
Received: 22 August 2023; Accepted: 27 November 2023; Published: 14 December 2023
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Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
CMOS sensors

Dark current

X-ray astronomy

X-rays

Sensors

Radiation effects

CCD image sensors

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