Irradiation Damage Tests on Backside-Illuminated CMOS APS Prototypes for the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager On-Board Solar Orbiter

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor (APS) prototypes made using 0.18 μm technology process have been developed for the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager of the Solar Orbiter mission. Backside illuminated CMOS APS devices, i.e., 256 × 256 pixels area, 10 μm pixel pitch with different pixel designs have been fully characterized in the visible and in EUV wavelengths. A set of irradiation tests were carried out to investigate the degradation of the devices expected in the space environment conditions of Solar Orbiter. Total ionizing dose effects from grounded measurements are presented up to 150 krad[SiO₂]. The prototype sensors show the immunity to single-event latch up at linear energy transfer´s of 67.7 MeV cm²/mg but were observed to suffer from strong degradations after proton irradiation test (with a cumulated fluence up to 4×10¹¹ protons/cm²) and from single event functional interrupt.