2023/11/01 by Edgar Marrufo Villalpando, Villalpando, Edgar Marrufo, A. Drlica-Wagner +30 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #Photocathodes and Microchannel Plates #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.00813
We present results from the characterization and optimization of six Skipper CCDs for use in a prototype focal plane for the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS). We tested eight Skipper CCDs and selected six for SIFS based on performance results. The Skipper CCDs are 6k × 1k, 15 μm pixels, thick, fully-depleted, p-channel devices that have been thinned to ∼ 250 μm, backside processed, and treated with an antireflective coating. We optimize readout time to achieve <4.3 e- rms/pixel in a single non-destructive readout and 0.5 e- rms/pixel in 5 % of the detector. We demonstrate single-photon counting with N\rm samp = 400 (σ\rm 0e- ∼ 0.18 e- rms/pixel) for all 24 amplifiers (four amplifiers per detector). We also perform conventional CCD characterization measurements such as cosmetic defects ( <0.45 % ``bad" pixels), dark current (∼ 2 × 10-4 e-/pixel/sec.), charge transfer inefficiency (3.44 × 10-7 on average), and charge diffusion (PSF < 7.5 μm). We report on characterization and optimization measurements that are only enabled by photon-counting. Such results include voltage optimization to achieve full-well capacities ∼ 40,000-63,000 e- while maintaining photon-counting capabilities, clock induced charge optimization, non-linearity measurements at low signals (few tens of electrons). Furthermore, we perform measurements of the brighter-fatter effect and absolute quantum efficiency (\gtrsim 80 % between 450 nm and 980 nm; \gtrsim 90 % between 600 nm and 900 nm) using Skipper CCDs.