Influence of Terrestrial Cosmic Rays on the Reliability of CCD Image Sensors—Part 1: Experiments at Room Temperature

An aging effect in solid-state image sensors is studied: the generation of hard errors resulting in hot spots, warm pixels, or white pixels. These effects even occur in image sensors that are simply stored on the shelf. This paper describes experiments that are set up to prove that the main origin can be found with neutrons that create displacement damage in the silicon bulk. These neutrons are part of terrestrial cosmic rays. This statement is based on measurements done on devices that we stored on the shelf, that were flown around the world in airplanes, that were stored at high altitude, and that were stored in an underground laboratory. The creation of the hot spots is independent of technology, architecture, sensor type, or sensor vendor, and it is observed in charge-coupled devices as well as in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensors. In other words, it is a typical issue of the semiconductor base material: silicon! The paper is split up into two parts: this paper (part 1) describes the experiments done at room temperature, part 2 will concentrate on experiments done at higher temperatures.