Raytheon Vision Systems is under contract to develop 2K × 2K InSb Focal Plane Arrays (FPA) for the ORION and NEWFIRM projects teaming with NOAO, NASA, and USNO. This paper reviews the progress in the ORION, NEWFIRM, and the JWST projects, showing bare mux readout noise at 30 K of 2.4 e- and InSb dark current as low as 0.01 e-/s. Several FPAs have been fabricated to date and the ongoing improvements for the fabrication of FPAs will be discussed. The FPA and packaging designs are complete, resulting in a design that has self-aligning features for ease in FPA replacement at position of the focal plane assembly with alignment accuracy in the focus direction of ± 12 μm. The ORION/NEWFIRM modules are 2-side buttable to easily form 4K × 4K mosaics while the Phoenix modules, developed under the JWST development program, are 3-side buttable for ease in forming 4K × 2NK mosaics where N can be any integer. This paper will include FPA QE, dark current and noise performance, FPA reliability, and module-to-module flatness capabilities.

Date Published: 29 September 2004
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 5499, Optical and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy, (29 September 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.555200

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5499:
Optical and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy
James D. Garnett; James W. Beletic, Editor(s)