Multi-MGy Radiation Hardened Camera for Nuclear Facilities

International audienceThere is an increasing interest in developing cameras for surveillance systems to monitor nuclear facilities or nuclear waste storages [1]. Particularly, for today’s and the next generation of nuclear facilities increasing safety requirements consecutive to Fukushima Daiichi’s disaster have to be considered. For some applications, radiation tolerance needs to overcome doses in the MGy(SiO2) range whereas the most tolerant commercial or prototypes products based on solid state image sensors withstand doses up to few kGy [2]. The objective of this work is to present the radiation hardening strategy developed by our research groups to enhance the tolerance to ionizing radiations of the various subparts of these imaging systems by working simultaneously at the component and system design levels.Developing radiation-hardened camera implies to combine several radiation-hardening strategies. In our case, we decided not to use the simplest one, the shielding approach. This approach is efficient but limits the camera miniaturization and is not compatible with its future integration in remote-handling or obotic systems. Then, the hardening-by-component strategy appears mandatory to avoid the failure of one of the camera subparts at doses lower than the MGy.Concerning the image sensor itself, the used technology is a CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) designed by ISAE team with custom pixel designs used to mitigate the total ionizing dose (TID) effects that occur well below the MGy range in classical image sensors (e.g. Charge Coupled Devices (CCD), Charge Injection Devices (CID) and classical Active Pixel Sensors (APS)), such as the complete loss of functionality, the dark current increase and the gain drop. We’ll present at the conference a comparative study between these radiation-hardened pixel radiation responses with respect to conventional ones, demonstrating the efficiency of the choices made. The targeted strategy to develop the complete radiation hard camera electronics will be exposed. Another important element of the camera is the optical system that transports the image from the scene to the image sensor. This arrangement of glass based lenses is affected by radiations through two mechanisms: the radiation induced absorption andthe radiation induced refractive index changes. The first one will limit the signal to noise ratio of the image whereas the second one will directly affect the resolution of the camera. We’ll present at the conference a coupled simulation/experiment study of these effects for various commercial glasses and present vulnerability study of typical optical systems to radiations at MGy doses. The last very important part of the camera is the illumination system that can be based on various technologies of emitting devices like LED, SLED or lasers. The most promising solutions for high radiation doses will be presented at the conference.In addition to this hardening-by-component approach, the global radiation tolerance of the camera can be drastically improve by working at the system level, combining innovative approaches eg. for the optical and illumination systems. We’ll present at the conference the developed approach allowing to extend the camera lifetime up to the MGy dose range.[1] Cho, Jai Wan; Choi, Young Soo; Jeong, Kyung Min, “Monitoring Performance of the Cameras under the High Dose-Rate Gamma Ray Environments”, Health Physics:May 2014 - Volume 106 - Issue 5 - pS47-S58[2] Armani, J.M., Barrochin, P. ; Joffre, F. ; Gaillard, R. ; Saigne, F. ; Mainguy, J.L., “Enhancement of the total dose tolerance of a commercial CMOS active pixel sensor by use of thermal annealing”, Radiation and Its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS 2011 Proceedings), pp. 340-344,2011