Facility Focus
Highlighting a NASA Facility That Provides Function Beyond Space Exploration
Goddard’s Detector Systems Facility
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| A NASA employee works with the mask aligners and wafer bonder at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Detector Systems Facility. These labs at GSFC are available for use by other government, academic or commercial entities. |
The capabilities and expertise of the Detector Systems Facility and Goddard’s staff are well demonstrated in the successful projects that have been undertaken for NASA. Major successes include the following:
- Infrared (IR) camera for the New Horizons mission to Pluto
- Large-format two-dimensional addressable microshutter array for the James Webb Space Telescope
- Silicon wire bridge chips and polysilicon IR sources for the Spitzer Space Telescope
- World’s largest operational far IR bolometer array
- Low-noise cryogenic junction gate field-effect transistors (JFETs) for Gravity Probe B
- World’s first large-format gallium-nitride (GaN) ultra violet (UV) detector array
- HgCdTe infrared detector array for the Cassini mission to Saturn
- World’s first 1Kx1K gallium arsenide and wideband quantum well IR photodetector (QWIP) arrays
Specific areas of expertise in the labs include detector physics, microfabrication, detector characterization and engineering of high-performance detector systems. A project can be developed from the initial concept through the design, build and characterization phases all the way to final application.
Those seeking assistance from the Detector Systems Facility will be provided with a highly experienced team of engineers dedicated to helping find innovative, custom detector solutions that are space-qualified, robust in hostile environments and ultra-reliable.
Detector Development Laboratory (DDL)
The DDL is a microelectronics fabrication facility dedicated to the development of advanced detectors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), nanotechnology, circuits and components. The laboratory is built around a 4,800-square-foot Class 10/100 cleanroom housing an extensive array of semiconductor processing equipment to perform full-scale custom wafer fabrication. The laboratory also offers a large variety of fabrication equipment for optical and electron-beam lithography, wet and dry etching, oxidation, thin-film deposition of metals and dielectrics, ion implantation, indium bump bonding, wafer bonding, mechanical and laser wafer dicing, superconductor material fabrication, thin film metrology and device characterization.
Detector Characterization Laboratory (DCL)
This facility offers complete optical and electrical characterization of large-format detector arrays operating in the UV, visible and IR spectrums. The laboratory actually consists of several laboratories, including Class 100 and 10,000 cleanrooms for testing contamination-sensitive detectors and subsystems. Current measurement capabilities include readout noise, dark current, charge-transfer efficiency, absolute quantum efficiency, spatial resolution and modulation transfer function (MTF). Flight-qualification testing capabilities include radiation tests and ultra-low background testing in the IR with two specially built cryostats. The DCL also provides general-purpose reconfigurable detector array control and data acquisition electronics, blanket optical illumination and spot scans, flat-field uniformity and extensive data analysis.
Superconducting Detector Test Facility
The purpose of the facility is to develop and test superconducting (and other cryogenic) detectors operating at temperatures below 1 Kelvin. Dilution and Helium-3 refrigerators provide access to ultra-low temperatures. Sensitive instrumentation allows measurements of detector material properties and functional performance at frequencies ranging from direct current to microwave.
For more information, contact Carl Stahle, (301) 286-0968, Carl.M.Stahle@nasa.gov or visit http://detectors.gsfc.nasa.gov.
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