Reliability Assessment of Medium / Large Area PIN SI Photodiodes for Optical Wireless links for Intra – Spacecraft Communications

Reliability Assessment of Medium / Large Area PIN SI Photodiodes for Optical Wireless links for Intra – Spacecraft Communications ( OWLS )

The Reliability Assessment of Area PIN SI Photodiodes was an exhibition theme in the First International Symposium on Reliability of Optoelectronics for Space that took place in Cagliari Italy , between May 11 – 14, 2009.

INTA, the Instituto nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial in collaboration with Alter Technology  Spain, exposed in this Symposium themes related to COTS in Space, Proton Radiation Tests and Reliability Assessment Tests giving general conclusions about Radiation and Reliability Assessment.

Radiation Tests Conclusions

• A large variety of COTS devices has been evaluated to proton displacement damage. A decrease in responsivity (photosensitivity) and an increase of the dark current are observed.
• Results highly depend on the manufacturer and the technology of the detector under test.
• It has been observed that the degradation of the photodiodes dark current, quantified via the dark current damage factor, is a good and very sensible parameter to evaluate proton displacement damage in photodiodes.
• The ideal diode factor has been calculated for all the tested photodiodes. It has been observed that m 〉 2 for proton fluences above 10¹² p/cm² in all the cases.

Reliability Assessment Test Conclusions

• No failures during pre-evaluation and evaluation tests
• The Quality of the high volume commercial products tested has been found to be very good.
• Optical measurements repeatability need an accurate positioning setup and validation.
• Pass / Failure criteria definition is important for having a real picture of the stability of the devices.
• Good radiation performance of selected types.

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