The CIS115: a CMOS sensor qualified for optical imaging in the Jovian environment (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer will spend 8 years transiting to the Jovian environment after launching from French Guiana in 2022. The spacecraft’s 10 scientific instruments, including a high resolution optical imager called JANUS, will explorer the Jovian system for a mission duration of 3 years studying the icy surfaces of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa and atmosphere of Jupiter. Using the combination of a 13 slot filter wheel and a back-illuminated CMOS image sensor, the JANUS camera will perform colour mapping and imaging at wavelengths between 350 nm and 1064 nm and resolutions of up to 10 m/pixel resolution during a Ganymede orbital phase. The CIS115 is a rolling shutter image sensor from Teledyne-e2v that has been selected for JANUS. It is back-illuminated and anti-reflection coated in order to optimise detection efficiency in its 3 MPixel imaging area. Its 4T architecture reduces the dark current in the pinned photodiode collecting area to approximately 13 pA/cm^2 at 20˚C and allows the device to be operated with correlated double sampling for a readout noise performance of 5 electrons rms. In preparation for its use in JANUS, the CIS115 has undergone a thorough qualification programme, including exposure to ionising and non-ionising radiation levels of up to 200 krad(Si) and 2x10^10 protons/cm^2 (10 MeV equivalent), and a single event effect test campaign. The CIS115 device qualification is now complete and results from the radiation test campaigns are being used to predict the expected performance at various phases of the mission as radiation damage is accumulated in the sensor. Dark current is the primary performance characteristic that has been observed to degrade with irradiation, and predicting the device’s performance at the end of life allows the maximum operating temperature of the detector to be set and justified. Additionally, behaviour observed during the qualification testing has led to optimised readout schemes that reduce the device image lag performance across the dynamic range to below the 0.1% level.