Development of the High-resolution FUV Detector for the BepiColombo Mission

Abstract

The PHEBUS (Probing of Hermean Exosphere By Ultraviolet Spectroscopy) instrument on Mercury Planetary Orbiter in the BepiColombo mission is a dual FUV-EUV spectrometer (EUV: 55-155 nm, FUV: 145-315 nm). We are now developing the compact detector system sensitive to FUV airglow emissions of the Mercury. The FUV detector is required to have high spatial resolution (512×512 pixels) so that the wavelength resolution of the PHEBUS instrument should be 2 nm at the FUV range. The FUV detector consists of a Cs2Te photocathode, microchannel plates (MCPs), and a resistive anode encoder. In a position-sensitive system with a resistive anode encoder, the spatial resolution is determined by the signal-to-noise ratios at the anode terminals. Therefore, a high and stable electron gain of MCPs allows the position determination of each photoelectron event with high spatial resolution. We studied a method for achieving a high and stable electron gain. We fabricated a test model of the FUV detector incorporating a clamped pair of MCPs (V-stack) followed by a gap and a clamped triplet of MCPs (Z-stack) in cascade. We investigated the effect of the negative inter-stack potential on the PHD and the spatial resolution by means of calculation and experiments. As a result, the negative inter-stack potential made the electron gain more stable and the spatial resolution higher by ∼14%. In this paper we report the specific performance of the test model of the FUV detector.