Radiation Hardened Infrared FPA

Missile defense systems often need to operate in harsh natural and man-made environments with significantly elevated radiation levels, and many orbital missile defense platforms’ routine surveillance and remote sensing functionalities critically rely on radiation-hardened high-performance infrared Focal Plane Array (FPA)s, with wavelengths varying from visible to long-wavelength-infrared (LWIR) and even very-long-wavelength-infrared (VLWIR) bands. Radiation-hardened FPAs and cameras are essential to fully accomplish this important defense mission. To address these requirements, EPIR Inc. with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory proposes to design, fabricate and validate radiation-hardened LWIR and/or VLWIR FPAs using HgCdTe material grown utilizing molecular beam epitaxy. The team will also develop novel FPA pixel architectures that greatly reduce the susceptibility of the FPA to the deleterious effects of radiation. HgCdTe IR photon detectors and FPAs have high sensitivity compared to thermal detectors; allowing low integration times, enabling operation at high frame rates limited only by data bandwidth and the Poisson fluctuations in photon flux, hence becoming the ideal choice for detecting fast-moving targets and high-speed navigation of anti-missile weapons in high dynamic range or low contrast scenes. Approved for Public Release | 25-MDA-12220 (23 Sep 25)