Highly Scalable SiC UV Imager for Earth & Planetary Science

Commercial silicon carbide (SiC)-based photonic sensors typically use p-i-n photodiode and reversed-biased Avalanche Photodiode (APD) detectors. These state-of-the-art SiC photodiodes use the wafer substrate as one node of the device, thereby making monolithic integration of the device with control or analysis circuitry difficult, if not impossible. In Phase I, Ozark IC demonstrated that its new (patent-pending) photo detecting devices are suitable for integration in SiC-based low-voltage integrated circuit processes. By virtue of their construction, the photo-generation occurs efficiently and with very high gain, and the devices have been shown to operate over a wide voltage (10-15 V) and temperature range (-170 C to 400 C measured). Ozark IC's extensive library of SiC analog and mixed-signal IP and its expertise in extreme-environment IC design have been used to create the world's first fully integrated 2-D UV imager (up to 192 x 128 at > 10 frames per second); ready for fabrication in Phase II. The imagers will be tested across a wide range of temperatures to demonstrate their applicability to planetary exploration, earth observation and astronomy applications.