Study of damages caused by proton irradiation on MCT n/p focal plane cooled arrays

Abstract

HgCdTe (MCT) is a material system intensively used for IR sensing from space as it offers high detection performances. It is also considered as a relatively radhard material system as the performance degradation due to radiative space environment are usually not dramatic compared to other material systems. However, there is no clear understanding of the effect of displacement damage dose (DDD) or even total ionizing dose (TID) in this material system. In this communication, we present an extensive study of the damage due to protons on n/p MCT diodes sensing in the MW range. Both FPA full arrays, single diodes and MIS test structures have been irradiated with 63 MeV protons up to relatively high doses (8e11 protons/cm²). We will report about the evolution of dark current and noise degradation (mainly due to RTS), during and after irradiation, as well as after a thermal cycling up to 300K and even after a recovery annealing at higher temperature.