Vulnerability of CMOS image sensors in megajoule class laser harsh environment

Abstract

CMOS image sensors (CIS) are promising candidates as part of optical imagers for the plasma diagnostics devoted to the study of fusion by inertial confinement. However, the harsh radiative environment of Megajoule Class Lasers threatens the performances of these optical sensors. In this paper, the vulnerability of CIS to the transient and mixed pulsed radiation environment associated with such facilities is investigated during an experiment at the OMEGA facility at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), Rochester, NY, USA. The transient and permanent effects of the 14 MeV neutron pulse on CIS are presented. The behavior of the tested CIS shows that active pixel sensors (APS) exhibit a better hardness to this harsh environment than a CCD. A first order extrapolation of the reported results to the higher level of radiation expected for Megajoule Class Laser facilities (Laser Megajoule in France or National Ignition Facility in the USA) shows that temporarily saturated pixels due to transient neutron-induced single event effects will be the major issue for the development of radiation-tolerant plasma diagnostic instruments whereas the permanent degradation of the CIS related to displacement damage or total ionizing dose effects could be reduced by applying well known mitigation techniques.

Pixel pitch and particle energy influence on the dark current distribution of neutron irradiated CMOS image sensors

“…In addition to using the model to appreciate the effect of the optical imager and radiation parameters, it will be shown that the model accurately calculates the dark current distributions for all the optical sensors irradiated in this work. Moreover, the tested dose range covers most of the space missions end-of-life fluences and takes a step towards the very high fluences expected in Inertial Confinement Fusion experiment such as the National Ignition Facility or the Laser Mégajoule [10]. Consequently, this work validates the model on a broad range of optical imager features and radiation conditions and demonstrates that the model can be used to predict the dark current increase in various optical imager instruments for scientific applications in radiation environments.…”

“…CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) [1][2][3], also called Active Pixel Sensors (APS), have become the main detector technology for optical imaging systems [1][2][3][4][5][6] in consumer and high-end scientific applications [4][5][6]. These optical sensors are exposed to harsh radiation environments in a wide variety of imaging applications (medical imaging [4][5][6][7], space remote sensing [8,9], nuclear power plant monitoring, inertial confinement fusion plasma diagnostics [10,11]). These radiation environments contain particles (e.g.…”

“…These radiation environments contain particles (e.g. electrons, neutrons, protons) which can severely degrade the performance of optical [12] and optoelectronic [13] systems such as Charged Coupled Devices (CCD) or CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) [10,[14][15][16]. In CIS, the particles can produce temporary or destructive Single Event Effects (SEE) [17], but also cumulative effects which lead to the permanent degradation of key performances of the optical detector such as the sensitivity, the dynamic range, the dark current [18,19] or also the charge transfer efficiency in Pinned PhotoDiode (PPD) CIS [20].…”

“…Because state-of-the-art CIS are becoming the main technology for future optical imaging applications in space [8,9,26,27] or nuclear environments [10,28,29], it is important to develop tools for the prediction of the radiation-induced dark current in CIS. In particular, the number, spatial distribution and dark current amplitude of the highest dark current increases need to be anticipated for various optical imagers and irradiation conditions in order to select an appropriate mitigation strategy.…”

Single-Event Effects in CMOS Image Sensors

“…Therefore, not much can be done at the design level to mitigate or take into consideration the SEE effects which can disturb the sensor or degrade significantly the image quality. Several applications are already limited by such effects; here are some examples: star tracking application for satellite attitude control [9], space and earth observation applications, nuclear imaging for applications like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) or the French Laser Mega-Joule project (LMJ) [10]. The work described in this paper is divided into three parts : the first part presents the experimental setup, SEEs on each sub-circuits are discussed in the second part.…”