Advancing ultraviolet detector technology for future missions: investigating the dark current plateau in silicon detectors using photon-counting EMCCDs
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Understanding the noise characteristics of high quantum efficiency silicon-based ultraviolet detectors, developed by the Microdevices Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is critical for current and proposed UV missions using these devices. In this paper, we provide an overview of our detector noise characterization test bench that uses delta-doped, photon counting, Electron-multiplying CCDs (EMCCDs) to understand the fundamental noise properties relevant to all silicon CCDs and CMOS arrays. This work attempts to identify the source of the dark current plateau that has been previously measured with photon-counting EMCCDs and is known to be prevalent in other silicon-based arrays. It is suspected that the plateau could be due to a combination of detectable photons in the tail of blackbody radiation of the ambient instrument, low-level light leaks, and a non-temperature-dependent component that varies with substrate voltage. Our innovative test setup delineates the effect of the ambient environment during dark measurements by independently controlling the temperature of the detector and surrounding environment. We present the design of the test setup and preliminary results.
DOI: 10.1117/12.3021039
Language: English
Topic: CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4401780408