UV & Blue CCD Imager

The objective of this proposal is to develop near UV (NUV) and blue light CCD arrays with high sensitivity, high dynamic range and radiation hardness. A device structure is proposed that is inherently sensitive to short wavelength energy while beinginherently insensitive to visible and IR wavelengths. Using a fully depleted UTSir CMOS on sapphire structure which has proven radiation hardness creates the potential for a high sensitivity, high dynamic range CCD device inherently sensitive only to shortwavelengths. It is the purpose of this proposal to show that a complete UV/blue sensitive CCD can be developed in a proven radiation hard CMOS on sapphire process. By adding properly designed optical layers to the backside of the sapphire substrate,wavelength selectivity can be tailored to provide desired "solar blindness" which ensures applicability to daytime space-based navigation as well as to high dynamic range focal plane array imagers for space-based remote sensing. By using a commerciallyestablished process, manufacturability and time-to-market goals can be met and long term supply is ensured. Such a device would be applicable to space-based celestial navigation as well as blue and UV remote imaging. Commercially, such a device will findapplications in biomedical imaging and in deep submicron microscopy.