Analysis of proton and γ-ray radiation effects on CMOS active pixel sensors**Project supported the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11675259), the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Nos. XBBS201316, 2016-QNXZ-B-2, and 2016-QNXZ-B-8), and Young Talent Training Project of Science and Technology, Xinjiang, China (Grant No. qn2015yx035).

Abstract

Radiation effects on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensors (APS) induced by proton and γ-ray are presented. The samples are manufactured with the standards of CMOS technology. Two samples have been irradiated un-biased by 23 MeV protons with fluences of and , respectively, while another sample has been exposed un-biased to 65 krad(Si) 60Co γ-ray. The influences of radiation on the dark current, fixed-pattern noise under illumination, quantum efficiency, and conversion gain of the samples are investigated. The dark current, which increases drastically, is obtained by the theory based on thermal generation and the trap induced upon the irradiation. Both γ-ray and proton irradiation increase the non-uniformity of the signal, but the non-uniformity induced by protons is even worse. The degradation mechanisms of CMOS APS image sensors are analyzed, especially for the interaction induced by proton displacement damage and total ion dose (TID) damage.