Charge-coupled devices for the ESA PLATO M-class Mission

摘要

PLATO is a candidate mission for an European Space Agency M-class launch opportunity. The project aims to detectexo-planets from their transits across host stars and to characterise those stars by studying their oscillations, hence thename PLATO for, PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars. In order to achieve this aim the mission proposes to fly asatellite with a focal plane of up to 34 mini-telescopes, each containing 4 large area back illuminated Charge-CoupledDevices (CCDs) to provide ultra high precision photometry. If successful, the satellite will have nearly 0.9 msup2/sup of imagesensors and will be by far the largest composite detector focal plane ever flown. To meet the mission requirements e2vhave developed the CCD270 which has 4510 by 4510 pixels, each pixel is 18 μm by 18 μm, in a development funded bythe European Space Agency. This large area (81 mm x 81 mm) full frame image sensor is intended for precisionphotometry with a dynamic range in excess of 30,000. The CCD270 has been manufactured with a thinner gate dielectricand a higher buried channel dose than standard devices to increase the full well capacity in the image area. Theadditional advantages of the thinner gate are lower power dissipation, smaller clock voltage swing for standard channeldoses and higher tolerance to ionising radiation. This paper describes the imager sensor in detail and focuses on the novelaspects of the device, package and interface.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.