Rad Hard, Back-illuminated, SOI CMOS Star Tracker

To satisfy the demand for a reliable, high sensitivity, radiation hardened imager for space vehicle navigation star tracking tasks, we will design, simulate and optimize a radiation hard, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), fully-depleted, back-illuminatedstartracking sensor with enhanced sensitivity and centroiding capability. The device is unique in its performance and its radiation hardness. Radiation performance is enhanced through a reduced cross-section charge-collection region, sub-pixel/sub-frameradiation event mitigation, n-type epitaxial silicon, and SOI CMOS materials and processing.The mixed-signal SOI CMOS star tracker functionality includes random readout, non-destructive readout, binning, windowing, and Fowler/slope sampling for event and noise removal, and the imager is operated at app. 2,500 fps with 40 star tracks.The back-illuminated imager is made cost-effective, manufacturable, and robust, by implementing commercially available materials and standard semiconductor processes, including those required for back thinning, which is performed in a very simple manner inthe semiconductor fab and requires no post-processing. Unique to this program is the ability of the APS device to be radiation hard with high, wideband sensitivity from the EUV through to the NIR spectral range. These characteristics make it ideal for the growing market for commercial satellite startrackers.Additionally, the nearly ideal responsivity benefits a broad range of optical microscopy, spectroscopy, nondestructive test, surveillance, autonomous navigation, remote sensing, and astronomy applications. The EUV response of the detector benefitssubmicron photolithography, x-ray spectroscopy, plasma diagnostics, and nuclear physics.