Development of a Low Noise High Frame Rate CCD for Adaptive Optics
Adaptive optics rationale and design goals - fabrication and packaging - performance.
Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Janesick, J..
Adaptive optics rationale and design goals - fabrication and packaging - performance.
Charge-coupled devices (CCD's) were recognized for their potential as an imaging technology almost immediately following their conception in 1970. Twenty years later, they are firmly established as the technology of choice for visible imaging. While consumer applications of CCD's, especially the emerging home video camera market, dominated manufacturing activity, the scientific market for CCD imagers has become significant. Activity of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its industrial partners in the area of CCD imagers for space scientific instruments is described. Requirements for scientific imagers are significantly different from those needed for home video cameras, and are described. An imager for an instrument on the CRAF/Cassini mission is described in detail to highlight achieved levels of performance.
A virtual-phase charge-coupled device (CCD) was used to obtain pinhole images and X-ray spectra of laser-produced, solid target plasmas. With the CCD used in the single-photon counting mode, the spectrum in the energy range 2-10 keV was obtained without a dispersive element. Typical spectra reveal two distinct temperatures: a cold component of approximately 200 eV and a hot component of approximately 5 keV. Also, multiline spectra comprising characteristic line emission (K alpha, K beta) from a multilayer target bombarded by beta-rays were recorded using a three-phase CCD. The results demonstrate the potential of CCDs as imaging spectrometers with application in space, laboratory, and fusion-plasma research.
The charge-coupled device (CCD) has shown unprecendented performance as a photon detector in the areas of spectral response, charge transfer, and readout noise. Recent experience indicates, however, that the full potential for the CCD's charge collection efficiency (CCE) lies well beyond that which is realized in currently available devices. A definition of CCE performance is presented and a standard test tool (the photon transfer technique) for measuring and optimizing this important CCD parameter is introduced. CCE characteristics for different types of CCDs are compared; the primary limitations in achieving high CCE performance are discussed, and the prospects for future improvement are outlined.
Until recently, the usefulness of the charge coupled device (CCD) as an imaging sensor was thought to be restricted to within rather narrow boundaries of the visible and near IR spectrum. However, since the discovery of backside charging the full potential of CCD performance is now realized. Indeed, the technique of backside charging not only allows the CCD to be used directly in the UV, EUV, and soft X-ray regimes, it has opened up new opportunities in optimizing charge collection processes as well. The technique of backside charging is discussed, and its properties, use, and potential in the future as it applies to the CCD are described.