Investigation of Alpha Particle Induced Single-Event Upsets in Charge-CoupledDevices

摘要

The mechanisms for generation of single-event upsets (SEUs) in a linear chargecoupled device (CCD) were studied through irradiation with monoenergetic 5.48 MeV alpha particles from a very low flux Am source. Spatial correlation ( cluster analysis) of soft errors due to single alpha particle hits was demonstrated to be necessary prerequisite for quantitative analysis of different SEU error-generating phenomena. The Texas Instruments TC-103 virtual phase CCD used in this study is shown to be sensitive to alpha particles not only in the vicinity of photosites as expected, but also in the transport CCDS. This latter effect may have adverse consequences for applications employing CCDs as position-sensitive ionizing radiation detectors. The techniques developed in this work for the analysis of one dimensional arrays is readily extensible to two dimensional CCD arrays.