Enhanced CCD Design & Process ESCC Evaluation

 
CCD technology is one of the most important optical detection means used in many optical space missions at ESA and other space agencies. E2V being the sole supplier of CCDs in Europe is considered an important manufacturer for ESA. In the last 10 years or so, E2V have introduced new designs, and processes in their Chelmsford site, that is of great benefit to current and future projects. ESA and E2V have agreed to perform a space Evaluation of the new technologies and manufacturing processes introduce so far.

Objective(s)
Perform a thorough evaluation of recent CCD technology developments at Teledyne-e2v in order to make them available for future space missions without risk.

Achievements and status
A number of CCD wafer processing and design enhancements have been successfully evaluated, and proved to be suitable for use in custom sensor designs for future space missions.
For the majority of these enhancements the evaluation results have been reported and approved. A subset are still under evaluation, and expected to be completed in July 2017.

Benefits
Benefits to sensor performance or functionality in several key areas, including readout speed, multi-array CCDs, smaller pixels, broadband spectral response, suppression of optical interference effects, and stray light management.

Next steps
By the end of this activity, which will be end of June, we would have achieved our objectives, with no further actions.