A monolithic Si bolometer array for the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory

Abstract

We are developing a submillimeter continuum camera for the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) located on Mauna Kea. The camera will employ a monolithic Si bolometer array which was developed by Moseley et al. at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The camera will be cooled to a temperature of about 300 mK in a He-3 cryostat, and will operate primarily at wavelengths of 350 and 450 micrometers. We plan to use a bolometer array with 1x24 directly illuminated pixels, each pixel of dimension 1x2 sq mm, which is about half of the F/4 beam size at these wavelengths. Each pixel is 10 to 12 micrometers thick and is supported only by four thin Si legs formed by wet chemical etch. The pixels are doped n-type by phosphorus implantation, compensated by boron implantation. Signals from the bolometer pixels are first amplified by cryogenically cooled FET's. The signals are further amplified by room-temperature amplifiers and then separately digitized by 16 bit A/D converters with differential inputs. The outputs of the A/D converters are fed into a digital signal processing board via fiber-optic cables. The electronics and data acquisition system were designed by the Goddard group. We will report the status of this effort.