High-Speed, Low-Noise, Radiation-Tolerant CCD Image Sensors for Strategic High-Energy Astrophysics Missions

NASA's 2016 Physics of the Cosmos Program Annual Technology Report (PATR) identifies ‘fast, low-noise, megapixel X-ray imaging arrays’ as a top-priority technology development need for future strategic astrophysics missions. The Lynx large mission concept now under study by NASA for presentation to the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics, in particular, includes a notional high-definition X-ray imaging instrument requiring a combination of readout rate, noise, spatial resolution and size that cannot be furnished by currently-mature technologies. We have been developing a new generation of charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors with the aim of meeting this need. X-ray imaging CCDs have been flown successfully for more than twenty years, and state of the art devices provide low noise and near-theoretical spectral resolution, as well as spatial resolution and size approaching that required for Lynx. However, Lynx requires detector readout rates more than two orders of magnitude faster than current technology, with no compromise in noise or spectral resolution. This performance must be achieved within the instrument power and mass constraints and maintained over the expected lifetime of a strategic mission. We propose to advance the readiness of CCD technology to meet these requirements by capitalizing on developments at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for other applications which also require fast, large format, low-noise, low-power imagers. Building on high-speed prototype CCD X-ray detectors currently operating in our laboratory, we aim to fabricate and demonstrate devices with lower noise, better low-energy quantum efficiency, and improved radiation tolerance.

The Strategic Astrophysics Technology program (SAT) supports focused development efforts for key technologies to the point at which they are ready to feed into major missions in the three science themes of the Astrophysics Division: Exoplanet Exploration, Cosmic Origins, and the Physics of the Cosmos. This program is specifically designed to address middle technology readiness level (TRL) "gaps" between levels 3 and 6: the maturation of technologies that have been established as feasible, but which are not yet sufficiently mature to incorporate into flight missions without introducing an unacceptable level of risk. NASA does not require a data management plan for proposals to SAT.

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