Novel SiC UV Instrumentation Development with Potential Applications for the Habitable Worlds Observatory
In this paper, we detail recent and current work that is being carried out to fabricate and advance novel SiC UV instrumentation that is aimed at enabling more sensitive measurements across numerous disciplines, with a short discussion of the promise such detectors may hold for the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
We discuss SiC instrument development progress that is being carried out under multiple NASA grants, including several PICASSO and SBIR grants, as well as an ECI grant. Testing of pixel design, properties and layout as well as maturation of the integration scheme developed through these efforts provide key technology and engineering advancement for potential HWO detectors.
Achieving desired noise characteristics, responsivity, and validating operation of SiC detectors using standard read out techniques offers a compelling platform for operation of denser and higher dimensionality SiC photodiode arrays of interest for use in potential HWO Coronagraph, Spectrograph, and High Resolution Imaging Instruments.
We incorporate these SiC detector properties into a simulation of potential NUV exoplanet observations by HWO using SiC detectors and also discuss potential application to HWO.
(a) SiC arrays matched to readout electronics (b) SiC diodes with different pitches and aspect ratio Fig 5: The structure of SiC photodiode-based focal plane arrays for the ECI effort consists of: (a) A core 1×1024 array of SiC photodiodes, which fans out to wirebond pads matched to the inputs of wire bondable ROICs. In this case, the array is interfaced with 4 CTIA ROICs, each with 256 inputs. (b) The ECI effort is currently in the process of characterizing multiple diode variants, including: (i) arrays with a 25 µm pitch, and (ii) arrays with a 50 µm pitch. — astro-ph.IM
Prabal Saxena, Zeynep Dilli, Peter Snapp, Allison Youngblood, Tilak Hewagama, Shahid Aslam, Chullhee (Chace)Cho, Augustyn Waczynski, Nader Abuhassan, Ahn T. La, Bryan K. Place, Thomas F. Hansico, Ryan Stauffer, Dina Bower, Akin Akturk, Neil Goldsman, Bryce Galey, Ethan Mountfort, Mitchell Gross, Ryan Purcell, Usama Khalid, Yekta Kamali, Chris Darmody, Robert Washington, Tim Livengood, Daniel P. Moriarty, Carl A. Kotecki, Narasimha S. Prasad, Joseph Wilkins
Comments: 8 figures, Submitted to JATIS
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2412.21034 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2412.21034v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.21034
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Prabal Saxena
[v1] Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:59:08 UTC (7,917 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.21034
Astrobiology,
