Rockwell has combined two independent, lower-cost testing approaches proven out on the U.S. Air Force's Manufacturing Technology for HgCdTe Focal Plane Arrays (MANTECH) program and the Ballistic Missile Defense Office's (BMDO, formerly Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO)) Hybrids With Advanced Yield for Surveillance (HYWAYS) program. These two testing approaches are, respectively, cryoprobing focal plane arrays and using multiple device test dewars. These approaches will be combined for significantly lower testing costs for defense-related programs such as the Air Force's AGM-130 program. The revised methodology utilizes the low-cost approach of cryoprobing batches of up to nine focal plane arrays, mounted on test carriers, to screen out the predominant failure causes, followed up with final acceptance testing of the arrays passing the cryoprobe test in multiple device dewars. This approach is projected to reduce the testing costs by a factor of 1.6 compared with the current testing approach of single device dewar testing. Planned improvements of increasing the degree of automation and improving the cryoprobe station to measure noise are expected to further reduce testing costs by an additional factor of six.

Date Published: 30 May 1995
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 2474, Smart Focal Plane Arrays and Focal Plane Array Testing, (30 May 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.210561

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2474:
Smart Focal Plane Arrays and Focal Plane Array Testing
Marc Wigdor; Mark A. Massie, Editor(s)