Characterization of more than three years of in-orbit radiation damage of SiPMs on GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2 CubeSats

TL;DR

This study provides the first long-term in-orbit characterization of SiPM radiation damage, specifically dark count rate increase, over three years on CubeSats, demonstrating their suitability for space gamma-ray detection.

Contribution

It reports the extended in-orbit performance of Hamamatsu MPPCs in space, showing their durability and potential for future satellite gamma-ray missions.

Findings

Dark count rate increased over three years in orbit

MPPCs remained operational and effective for gamma-ray detection

Shielded MPPCs proved suitable for long-term space use

Abstract

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are prone to radiation damage which causes an increase of dark count rate. This leads to an increase in low-energy threshold in a gamma-ray detector combining SiPM and a scintillator. Despite this drawback, they are becoming preferred for scintillator-based gamma-ray detectors on CubeSats due to their low operation voltage, small size, linear response to low light intensity and fast response. This increasing popularity of SiPMs among new spaceborne missions makes it important to characterize their long-term performance in the space environment. In this work, we report the change of the dark count rate and low-energy threshold of S13360-3050 PE multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs) by Hamamatsu, using measurements acquired by the GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2 CubeSats at low Earth orbit (LEO) spanning over three years. Such a long measurement of the performance of MPPCs in space has not been published before. GRBAlpha is a 1U CubeSat launched on March 22, 2021, to a 550 km altitude sun-synchronous polar orbit (SSO) carrying on board a gamma-ray detector based on CsI(Tl) scintillator readout by eight MPPCs and regularly detecting gamma-ray transients such as gamma-ray bursts and solar flares in the energy range of ~30-900 keV. VZLUSAT-2 is a 3U CubeSat launched on January 13, 2022 also to a 535 km altitude SSO carrying on board, among other payloads, two gamma-ray detectors similar to the one on GRBAlpha. We have flight-proven the Hamamatsu MPPCs S13360-3050 PE and demonstrated that MPPCs, shielded by 2.5 mm of PbSb alloy, can be used in LEO environment on a scientific mission lasting beyond three years. This manifests the potential of MPPCs being employed in future satellites.