Abstract

CCD imagers suffer damage when exposed to soft X-ray irradiation, which limits their application in high photon flux environments. This damage manifests itself as increased dark current and reduced charge transfer efficiency. For conventional devices, significant damage is manifest after ∼105 rad exposure. This paper discusses the origins of this damage, the fabrication of radiation-hard devices, and details a series of post-radiation annealing experiments. High temperature annealing in molecular hydrogen has yielded encouraging results in a representative sample of devices. The effect of repeated irradiation-annealing cycles is discussed. © 1988