Proton irradiation of e2v technologies L3Vision devices

This paper describes the proton irradiation and subsequent analysis of 8 e2v technologies CCD65 L3Vision devices with the intention of assessing the suitability of L3Vision technology to applications in space. In particular the use of L3Vision charge coupled devices (CCDs) on the Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) instrument of the planned European Space Agency GAIA mission is discussed. The operational properties of the devices were characterised before irradiation with protons to a 10 MeV equivalent fluence of 2.5 × 109 protons cm-2. The devices were then characterised again before undergoing a second proton irradiation which increased the total 10 MeV equivalent proton fluence received by each device to 2.1 × 1010 protons cm-2. All 8 devices functioned as expected after each irradiation, with no catastrophic failures occurring even after the second irradiation which increased the total proton fluence to approximately 10 times the expected 6 year RVS fluence