New 8–13 μm Si:Ga/DRO hybrid arrays for very large telescopes

Abstract

Since 1984, the CEA-LETI-LIR (Infrared Laboratory) has been involved in development of Si:Ga/DRO hybrid detector arrays dedicated to imaging of astronomical sources in the 8–13 μm range. Successively, 32×32 element arrays were successfully manufactured for the ISOCAM camera and 64×64 arrays were fabricated for ground-based imaging. The latter detectors have been integrated in 3 cameras (C10μ, CAMIRAS and TIMMI for ESO) and have led to excellent astrophysical results since 1990.

To equip instruments to be mounted on very large telescopes such as the European VLT at ESO, manufacture of new arrays has been undertaken and is currently under way at CEA-LETI-LIR. These new arrays will have a 128×192 format and will present the outstanding essential feature that their storage capacity will be able to be changed according to observation conditions (2 capacities will be implemented in the pixel).

The main characteristics of these new detectors will be presented in this paper.