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Effects of space-radiation damage

and temperature on CCD noise for
the Lyman FUSE mission

Richard G. Murowinski, Linzhuang Gao, M. Jamal Deen

Richard G. Murowinski, Linzhuang Gao, M. Jamal Deen, "Effects of space-

radiation damage and temperature on CCD noise for the Lyman FUSE
mission," Proc. SPIE 1953, Photonics for Space Environments, (15
September 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.156564

Event: Optical Engineering and Photonics in Aerospace Sensing, 1993,

Orlando, FL, United States

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 Effects of Space Radiation Damage and Temperature on CCD Noise
for the Lyman FUSE Mission
R.G. Murowinskia, Gao Linzhuangb, M.J. Deenc

ABSTRACT

Charge Coupled Device (CCD) imaging arrays are becoming more frequently used in space vehicles and
equipment, especially space-based astronomical telescopes. It is important to understand the effects of radiation on
a CCD so that its performance degradation during mission lifetime can be predicted, and so that methods to prevent
unacceptable performance degradation can be found. Much recent work by various groups has focused on the
problems surrounding the loss of charge transfer efficiency and the increase in dark current and dark current spikes
in CCDs. The use of a CCD as the fine error sensor in the Lyman Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE)
will be limited by its noise performance. In this work we attempt to understand some of the factors surrounding the
noise degradation due to radiation in a space environment. Later, we demonstrate how low frequency noise can be
used as a characterization tool for studying proton radiation damage in CCDs.

We have subjected discrete LDD MOS transistors to proton radiation damage representative of the damage
they would receive on the 5 year FUSE mission. We measured the noise spectral density in the transistors as a
function of gate voltage, temperature and total radiation dose. These data were then used to model the resultant read
noise lower limit for that transistor if used as the charge conversion - output stage of a CCD imaging array detector.
We find that there is very clear excess noise being contributed to the CCD output as a result of radiation. The excess
noise is of a form that renders invalid the usual relationship between noise and read rate in a CCD.

We have also subjected CCDs to similar levels of radiation damage. Imaging with the damaged CCDs
allowed us to asses the amount of spatial noise resulting from excess dark current. We present data showing the
effectiveness of reducing dark current noise by means of dark current subtraction.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Lyman FUSE spacecraft is one which will be subjected to an unusually severe radiation environment.
The orbit has a perigee of 600 km and an apogee of 71,000 km. Each orbital period of 23 hours and 56 minutes
will see the spacecraft traverse the trapped proton belt twice.

The Fine Error Sensor (FES) on this spacecraft is required to deliver information to the fine pointing system
every two seconds so that the instrument pointing can be maintained to within 0.2 arcseconds. The FES needs
adequate sensitivity to be able to provide this information with a 95% probability of finding guide objects at any
orientation in the sky. The fine error sensor being studied for use in the spacecraft is a CCD.

Radiation is known to have many deleterious effects on CCDs: the dark current increases, a number of dark
current spikes appear in the image, charge transfer efficiency goes down and flat band changes cause the required
bias and clocking voltages to change. It is important to understand how these changes will impact the ability of the

aR Murowinski is with the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, 5071 W. Saanich Road, Victoria B.C. Canada V8X 4M6.

bGao Linzhuang is on exchange at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory from the Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Beijing,
100080 P.R.China.

CMJ Deen is with the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.

0-8194-1 189-2/931$6.00 SPIE Vol. 1953 Photonics for Space Environments (1993)171
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 FES to deliver pointing information to the spacecraft.

2. RADIATION EXPERIMENT

The proton energy spectrum for this mission has been calculated' and described elsewhere2 and is shown
in Figure 1 . The displacement damage as a function of depth into the silicon was modelled at a sampling of points
over the spectrum, using TRIM-91 software3. It was noted that for the range of energies impacting the silicon, the
stopping distance was significantly longer than the physical size of structures of interest. From the TRIM-9l model
we calculated the total displacement damage for the integrated spectrum and for a depth of 2 microns of silicon, in
a manner similar to that described by Janesick et al4.

From this information, and again using the TRIM-91 model, we are able to predict that the same amount
of displacement damage in the CCD would occur with a fluence of I .Oxl O protons/cm2 if the protons were mono-
energetic and with an energy of 1 MeV. Given the relatively long stopping distances of protons at and above 1
MeV, we feel that displacement damage is created with this energy in a way that would be representative of the
displacement damage resulting from the entire mission spectrum.

Test transistors and CCDs were placed in the beam of the University of Western Ontario tandem accelerator.
The devices were electrically grounded on all pins and at room temperature. An event counting detector which had
previously been geometrically calibrated was placed in the beam near the test device to determine the total dose.

Using this equipment, one set of devices was subjected to 5.Oxl O' protons/cm2 at I .00 MeV and another
to 2.7x1 O protons/cm2 at I .00 MeV, while a third set was not damaged. These fluences simulate the damage at one-
half mission level and at 2.7 times mission level.

The transistors used in the experiments are Lightly Doped Drain (LDD) depletion mode n-type buried
channel MOSFETs that were fabricated by Tektronix as part of their CCD development program5. Four chips of
1 5 independent transistors that were packaged in a 48-pin ceramic package were used in the experiments. These
transistors have width (W) to length (L) ratios from 6Opm I 10pm to 27pm I l5pm, and they all had typical field-
effect transistor (PET) current-voltage (I-V) characteristics.

The CCDs which were damaged are model FA1024 CCDs made by Ford Aerospace6. They are front side
illuminated CCDs with 1024 X 1024 l5pm pixels, and without notch technology. They do have implants to allow
Multiple Pinned Phase (MPP) operation. The CCDs were irradiated with 5.0x10 protons/cm2 on one half of the
imaging area and serial register, and with 2.7x1 0 protons/cm2 on the other half.

3. READ NOISE

The limiting source of noise in a well designed CCD system using Dual Correlated Sampling (DCS)
measurement is that of the output - charge conversion MOSFET. Recent work by Kim and others5 has been
undertaken to understand and optimise the low noise floating diffusion amplifier typically used as this stage. The
result has been a LDD output stage design that consistently produces CCDs with about 2 e- RMS noise at 50
kpixels/second read rates rather than the more typical 6 - 12 e- RMS. The improved dynamic range and limiting
small signal that can be achieved with a lower read noise is certainly desirable. Unfortunately, reaping these benefits
also makes the CCD and its performance parameters more sensitive to an absolute noise increase as a result of
radiation damage.

The signal resulting from a DCS processor as a result of some input noise spectral density S+ can be
expressed as

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 2Ir
r .
sin4ØtftDCS)
1/2

(1)
Vn(ADU) = -_-- JS (f) . df
AS[O (ftDcs)2

where Vn is the resultant signal in analog to digital units (ADU), S is the noise power spectrum of the input signal
(V2/Hz), t is the DCS time constant and As is the system gain.

A typical modem CCD with an LDD output transistor will have a source follower gain of 0.8 and an input
node sensitivity of about .25 pV per electron. In the usual source follower configuration such a transistor will
present at its output 1.0 pV of signal per electron charge at the input. One can further show that for As = 8.1x107
the DCS output will be one ADU when the signal level (charge level - reset level) is I .0 pV at the CCD FET source.

Drain referred noise spectra were recorded from the transistors. They were subsequently corrected for the
gain and noise of the measurement setup. They were then integrated using Equation (1 ) and the value of As
determined above. Hence all of the following integrated noise data presented in ADUs can be interpreted as being
equal to the CCD output referred effective noise in pV (1 ADU = I pV output referred). If we use values for node
sensitivity and VET gain given above, the ADU values can also be interpreted as about equal to the input referred
noise in electrons (1 ADU I e- input referred).

For noise made up of white noise, 1/f noise and generation-recombination noise, one can show that

S (f)=Nw I+ l1m l LJ (2)

4t1 tf) 4ir2t0'r f)
where m is the exponent of the 1/f component of the noise, and t0 and t1 are minimum and maximum trapping
process time constants respectively.

With such a spectrum, as one increases the DCS time constant t, one expects the noise in the output
to decrease as

(3)
,
Vnocj t DCS

while the majority of energy coupled through the DCS transfer function comes from the white noise part of the
spectrum, that is the second and third terms of Equation (2) are much less than one. As more energy from the 1/f
noise or the generation-recombination (ge-re) noise components gets coupled in, one expects diminishing noise
improvement with increasing t.
For most scientific CCD output FETS, l/4t1 is about one kHz. White noise provides the majority of read
noise for read rates faster than about 10 kPixls (t = 50 ps). We measure for a typical undamaged transistor
(D8/Q8) and at a gate voltage Vga,e of -2V that N = 3.17xl014 volts2, t1 = 8.3x104 seconds and m = 0.63. We
created a model of a normal and undamaged transistor by substituting these values into Equation (2). Integrating
the resultant model spectrum with Equation (I), we calculated the noise expected out of the DCS processor as a
function of t5. This relationship is shown in Figure 2.

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 This noise - speed relationship is often relied upon by the CCD system designer to improve the small signal
detection limit of a CCD by reducing the read noise at the expense of readout time. We examined how the excess
noise as a result of radiation damage modified the expected noise - speed relationship.

Figure 3 shows the resultant noise after calculated DCS processing for transistors which have been subjected
to 5.OxlO and 2.7xl09 protons (1.0MeV) 1 cm2, as well as a virgin transistor. The DCS processing was calculated
for the case of t = I 0 ps, corresponding to a CCD readout speed of 50 kPixls. There is a clear noise excess as a
function of gate voltage, and this excess noise increases with radiation dose. It is also evident that the integrated
excess noise power increases with temperature. The shifting of the noise peak to lower gate voltages in Figure 3c
when compared to Figure 3b, is the result of trapped oxide charge.

Superimposed on the noise curves of Figure 3 are the measured post-irradiation transconductance g of these
transistors. We clearly see two transconductance inflection points at about -1 .5 volts and -4.5 volts in the most
damaged transistor, Figure 3c. The two inflection points suggests that these transistors have two threshold voltages
viii as defined by a rapid change in their I-V characteristics9. This interpretation is supported by the raw I-V curves.
The two inflection points are also seen but to a lesser extent in the less damaged transistor of Figure 3b.

Figures 4a, 4b and 4c show V versus t for the transistor in the linear mode of operation, at gate biases
as indicated in the Figures. These biases were selected to correspond to the local minimum V in the damaged
transistors seen in Figure 3. Here we see that there is a dramatic variation of V at the higher values for the
damaged transistor, and in fact V increases with t after a critical which depends on both temperature and
radiation damage, in contradiction to predictions from Equation 3. These results indicate that similar integrated noise
could be obtained by using longer t at lower temperatures.

The reason for the deviation from normal noise behaviour seen in Figures 3 and 4 above is evident if one
graphs {S+ . frequency} versus frequency for any of the damaged transistors. Figure 5 presents the data from a
virgin transistor (lower line) along with the measurement of one damaged transistors. There is a clear noise excess
centred at about 50 Hz which appears similar in form to generation-recombination (ge-re) noise.

In a transistor with relatively low channel fields, one expects the ge-re noise from each trapping time
constant t to be of the form'°

S+(f)=F (4)
1 +2t2

where F is a function of charge, mobility, current, voltage and channel geometry but deemed to be constant for this
measurement. The dotted line in Figure 5 represents a fit to Equation (4) for one single trapping time constant.
Clearly the interpretation that the radiation noise excess is a result of ge-re noise is supported.

We are currently processing these data to understand the number and impact on noise of the radiation-
induced generation-recombination centres.

4. DARK CURRENT

As radiation damage proceeds in a CCD, one sees two changes in dark current characteristics. There is a
general increase in dark current (I) and there are a growing number of discrete "dark current spikes" or pixels of
abnormally higher I
Dark current in a CCD is usually considered to originate at three distinct sources11:

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 - the interface between the oxide and the silicon epitaxy;
- the bulk silicon in the epitaxy; and
- the bird beak at the edge of the channel stop oxide.

Interface dark current, which comprises the bulk of I in a normal CCD, is relatively well understood and can be
controlled by operating the CCD in multiple pinned phase (MPP) mode. Recent work by points to bird
beak dark current as the source of dark current spikes resulting from ionizing radiation. Unfortunately, a fix has not
yet been found for the general I increase caused by bulk silicon damage.

The CCDs we damaged have implanted barriers to be able to operate in MPP mode. We chose not to
operate them as MPP devices, but rather to use the dynamic interface I suppression technique7 to be able to
separate the interface I from the other sources. In this technique, a static measurement measures the sum of all
dark current. The dynamic measurement suppresses the largest contributor to I, interface dark current, to near
MPP levels. We made measurements of both long integration (static) I and the I rate while the imaging area
was being clocked every 200 msec (dynamic). In Figure 6 we see the static I represented as solid lines and the
dynamic 1th as dashed lines. There is a clear and well-behaved increase in bulk and interface Idark as radiation
damage proceeds.

A graph of Idark versus amount of radiation damage, such as that presented in Figure 7 for the measurement
of -40C, shows a linear relationship between Idark and dosage. By convolving this linear relationship with the usual
expression for 1dark' one finds that for this CCD and for the case of damage from the trapped proton belt, the I (in
electrons per second per pixel) during mission can be empirically expressed as

Idark =2.5X10'5( K+K . )AT'5EXP -_L. (5)

exp
2kT

where T is the absolute temperature, t is elapsed mission time, Eg is the energy gap of silicon, A is the area of a
pixel in cm2 (2.25 X lOb), K is the virgin CCD I rate in nA/cm2 and is the rate of dark current increase.
The values we measure for K and Kexp are listed in Table (1).

Operating Condition K
Static 0.13 nAJcm2 3.62 nA/cm2/year

Dynamic 0.026 nA/cm2 1.81 nA/cm2/year

awe i : vaiues or is anu ic ror me riuz' . v in me yman rut mission.
It is important for this mission to understand how much the Idark contributed to the spatial noise in a CCD.
One expects that much of the spatial noise is a result of dark current spikes with fixed locations on the CCD. We
also wanted to measure the effectiveness of reducing noise by means of dark current subtraction.

Toward this end, we measured the spatial standard deviation of in the CCD as a function of temperature
and exposure level. We also took long I calibration frames which were normalized in exposure time and
subtracted from the measurement exposures. Figure 8a and 8b show results for a temperature of -80C. Theses
results are typical of the series of measurements performed at temperatures from -40C to -80C. In Figure (8) we
see the effect on raw spatial noise for successively longer exposures. We also see that a reduction to 40% of the
original noise is achieved by subtraction of the calibration dark frame. Also plotted on the same frames are the
limiting noise levels expected if the I were only subject to read noise and Poisson statistics.

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 It is evident that the reduction of I by reference subtraction is not complete. This is probably because
of non-linear effects in the damaged CCD which prevents the longer exposure reference frame from being a linear
representation of dark current at any exposure level. Charge transfer inefficiency is one possible mechanism of non-
linearity in the damaged chip.

5. CONCLUSIONS

From these measurements we find an increase in CCD read noise as a result of proton radiation damage.
The noise is a result of induced trapping centres creating excess generation-recombination noise. In general, the
noise excess is greater at slower read rates and warmer temperatures. We also find that the bias range over which
linear behaviour is expected of an LDD MOSFET is reduced in a damaged transistor. This effect would manifest
itself in the CCD as increasingly non-linear behaviour of the CCD output as radiation damage progresses, or as a
more restrictive range at which the CCD output MOSFET must be biased to retain some linear performance.

The data demonstrate that there is a linear relationship between I MeV proton dose and mean dark current
level. The spatial noise created by dark current is much greater than what would be expected if Poisson statistics
represented the noise. The spatial noise resulting from dark current can be decreased to 0.4 (or less) of the original
value by subtracting a dark reference frame.

6. ACKOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Morley Blouke of Tektronix for the test transistors. We would also like to thank
Dick Bredthauer of Loral Aerospace for test CCDs. We would also like to thank the Canadian Project Scientist for
the Lyman FUSE mission, John Hutchings at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory for useful discussions and
encouragement. This work was financially supported by the Canada Space Agency.

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 7. REFERENCES

[1] G.Stassinopoulos and J.M.Barth, 'FUSE Elliptical Orbit Radiation Environment," NASA/Goddard publication
X-900-9 I -09.

[2] S. Friedman, Johns Hopkins University, private communication.

[3] J. Ziegler, J. Biersack, and U. Littmark, The Stopping and Range of Ions in Solids, Pergamon Press, 1985.

[41 James Janesick, George Soli, Tom Elliot and Stewart Collins, 'The Effects of Proton Damage on Charge-
Coupled Devices," SPIE Vol 1147, 1991.

[51 H. Kim, M.M. Blouke, and D.L. Heidtmann, 'Effects of Transistor Geometry on CCD output Sensitivity,"
Vol 1242, 195 (1990).

[61 J. Janesick, T. Elliot, R. Bredthauer, J. Cover, R. Schaefer, R. Varian, 'Recent Developments in Large Area
Scientific CCD Image Sensors," SHE Vol 1071-11, January (1989).

[71 Barry E. Burke and Stephanie A. Gajar, "Dynamic Suppression of Interface-State Dark Current in Burned
Channel CCD's," IEEE trans. on Electron Devices vol 38, 285 (1991).

[8] R. Murowinski, G. Linzhuang, M. Deen, 'Effects of Space Radiation Damage and Temperature on the Noise
in CCDs and LDD MOS Transistors," to appear in IEEE trans. on Nuclear Science Vol 40 No 3 (1993).

[91 M.J. Deen and Z.X. Yan, "A New Method of Measuring the Threshold Voltage for Small Geometry
MOSFETs from Subthreshold Conduction," Solid-State Electronics, Vol 33(5), pp. 503-512 (May 1990).

[10] Aldert van der Ziel, Noise in Solid State Devices and Circuits, pp 134-137, John Wiley and Sons (1986).

[II] J. Janesick, "CCD News Letter #7," available from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasedena California.

SPIE Vol. 1953 Photonics for Space Environments (1993)! 77

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 78
/
SPIE

Vol.

1953

Photonics - -z . 6 &E >

for curve
= mm 10-I 102 l0 10$
Figure Figure
0.2- 04- 0.6- 0.8- 1.2H
10-s
0 is 10-2

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2: of 1:
Space
the
Ta.
8.3xO4
raw
Proton

Modelled
10-I

proton
seconds
energy
Environments

noise

and

m after
(1993)
10° 6mm
= spectrum,
spectrum

Tau
Trapped
DCS I Energy
0.63 -
the for
04 Transistor

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Proton

(seconds) (MeV) Raw

mse1 lower 101
Flux
Lyman

processing.
curve
spectrum

FUSE

Nw has
= 102

been HEO.

The

3.17x1014
shielded
10 H
10-a

V2, by upper
 D8Q)) D8Q8. Vgate — -2v

4- Transonductance
(Arbitrir units)
2- -- z
z
tO- -
H

8-

6- T-24C T—OC T—-70C

-3 -2.8 -2.6 -2.4 -2.2 -2 -1.8 -1.6 -1.4 -1.2 -

Vgatc(V Tau (seconds)

Figure 3a: Noise vs Vgatc for an undamaged Figure 4a: Noise vs t for an undamaged device
transistor. operating in the linear region.

D6)Q8. Vgatc — -2.5v

Is -
Sub-threshold Linear
I,-
Trinsconductance
(Arbitrary units)
'4- -

12- / z --------
:

---------
TIc
O-ff
o2b T—-65C

'0-i l0-
Vgate (V) Tau (seconds)

Figure 3b: Noise vs Vgatc, 5.0x108 protons/cm2. Figure 4b: 5.0x108 protons/cm2, linear region.

D9Q8 D9Q8. Vgate — -35v

Transconductance
6- (Arbitrary units)

'4-
z
z 12 H
T-24C
------------
-
T-IC -----

::L

-5 -4_5 -4 -3.S .3 -2.5 -2 -l5 10-S 10-i 10

\gatc)\) Tau (seconds)

Figure 3c: Noise vs V, 2.7x109 protons/cm2. Figure 4c: 2.7x109 protons/cm2, linear region.

SHE Vol. 1 953 Photonics for Space Environments (1 993) I 79

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 x10"
7—r— • .

> 5
C)
r.
C)

*
C)

0
C)

z0
1i

ib-i 100 10' 102 10

Frequency(Hz)
Figure 5: Noise*Power spectra for an undamaged transistor (bottom) and a
damaged transistor (top). The dotted line indicates a fit for ge-re noise.

2.7E9
02

10'

100

10-'

10-2

-85 -80 -75 -70 --: -64) -55 -50 -45 -44) -35

Temperature (C) No. of I MeV protons x 10

Figure 6: I versus temperature for CCDs at two Figure 7: I, as a function of I MeV proton dose.
levels of damage, and for an undamaged CCD. The
dotted line indicates measurements in which the
interface dark current was suppressed.

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 -80.5 C, Low Radiation

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

Mean Idark (e-)

Figure 8a: 5X108 protons/cm2.

-80.5 C, High Radiation

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500

Mean Idark (e-)

Figure 8b: 2.7X i0 protons/cm2

Figures (8a) and (8b) indicate the I spatial noise as a function of I level. The top line
is raw noise and the middle line is residual noise after dark subtraction. The lower dotted
line is the limiting case expected from purely Poisson statistics.

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