Proton radiation hardness of X-ray SOI pixel sensors with pinned depleted diode structure

TL;DR

This study evaluates the radiation hardness of a new XRPIX6E X-ray sensor with a PDD structure, demonstrating its suitability for space applications despite some spectral degradation after proton irradiation.

Contribution

First proton irradiation experiment on XRPIX6E with PDD structure showing enhanced radiation hardness and compliance with space mission requirements.

Findings

Energy resolution degraded by 25% after 40 krad irradiation

XRPIX6E meets the spectral performance requirements for FORCE

PDD structure improves radiation tolerance compared to previous XRPIX devices

Abstract

X-ray SOI pixel sensors, "XRPIX", are being developed for the next-generation X-ray astronomical satellite, "FORCE". The XRPIX are fabricated with the SOI technology, which makes it possible to integrate a high-resistivity Si sensor and a low-resistivity Si CMOS circuit. The CMOS circuit in each pixel is equipped with a trigger function, allowing us to read out outputs only from the pixels with X-ray signals at the timing of X-ray detection. This function thus realizes high throughput and high time resolution, which enables to employ anti-coincidence technique for background rejection. A new series of XRPIX named XRPIX6E developed with a pinned depleted diode (PDD) structure improves spectral performance by suppressing the interference between the sensor and circuit layers. When semiconductor X-ray sensors are used in space, their spectral performance is generally degraded owing to the radiation damage caused by high-energy protons. Therefore, before using an XRPIX in space, it is necessary to evaluate the extent of degradation of its spectral performance by radiation damage. Thus, we performed a proton irradiation experiment for XRPIX6E for the first time at HIMAC in the NIRS. We irradiated XRPIX6E with high-energy protons with a total dose of up to 40 krad, equivalent to 400 years of irradiation in orbit. The 40-krad irradiation degraded the energy resolution of XRPIX6E by 25 $\pm$ 3%, yielding an energy resolution of 260.1 $\pm$ 5.6 eV at the full width half maximum for 5.9 keV X-rays. However, the value satisfies the requirement for FORCE, 300 eV at 6 keV, even after the irradiation. It was also found that the PDD XRPIX has enhanced radiation hardness compared to previous XRPIX devices. In addition, we investigated the degradation of the energy resolution; it was shown that the degradation would be due to increasing energy-independent components, e.g., readout noise.