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15 - General Engineering
Brunel University London
The effect of protons on the performance of swept-charge devices
This paper describes the extensive proton radiation damage study carried out to assess the performance of innovative swept-charge device (SCD) silicon X-ray detectors for the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) instrument that flew to the Moon in 2008. The study showed that the detectors could not only survive the expected maximum proton fluence for the planned lunar mission but that with sufficient cooling the detectors would still provide good spectral resolution at the end of the planned mission lifetime. The SCD manufacturer, e2v technologies, has subsequently invested in the development of larger area SCDs for future space based X-ray spectroscopy applications.