Silicon-based hybrid CMOS focal plane array technology offers many advantages needed for both ground-based and space imaging applications. These advantages include enhanced UV and NIR sensitivity, extensive on-chip readout capability, inherent radiation hardness, flexible imaging readout and the ability to provide extremely low noise at high video rates. For infrared imaging applications that involve UV-through visible channels, the readout electronics commonality facilitates a great simplification to system designs. In this paper, Rockwell Scientific CMOS-based hybrid silicon FPA technology and the recent progress are presented. The hybrid FPAs developed include 640x480, 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 formats with pixel sizes ranging from 27 m to 18 m square, featuring a high optical fill factor (~100%), broad-band response (200nm to 1000nm) with high quantum efficiency, and low read noise (<6e-) that approaches astronomy CCDs at 100KHz video rate and surpasses astronomy CCDs at 1MHz rate. Other performance parameters, such as spatial uniformity, dark current, pixel crosstalk/MTF and CMOS features are also discussed. SENSOR TECHNOLOGY FOR SPACE APPLICATION CCD and CMOSThe key requirements for a sensor assembly to operate in space environments are high reliability, low weight, low power and high tolerance to radiation damage. Since its invention in 1969 1 , silicon charge-coupled device (CCD) has improved in performance and built its flight heritage. Both size and format of CCDs have increased in the past several years for much-improved field-of-view and imaging resolution. This technology has been made available for various space missions, such as Galileo spacecraft 2 and Hubble Space Telescope 3 . However, concerns about CCDs in space exist due to charge transfer degradation in radiation environments, excessive power consumption, blooming and image smearing.CMOS-based monolithic image sensor is another class of solid-state electronic imaging sensor that is rapidly evolving along with the advances in modern sub-micron CMOS technology. CMOS sensors offer important solutions to the CCD limitations encountered for use in orbit. The operation of CMOS sensors requires only one charge transfer (pixel-based charge-to-voltage conversion) for signal readout, consumes a very low power (typically operated at 3.3V and lower), and enables miniature cameras with on-chip integration of analog and digital circuitry, which significantly reduces the system mass, volume and complexity. In addition, the CMOS sensor can operate in a wide temperature range (cryogenic to 350K). CMOS wafer fabrication can use the mainstream commercial semiconductor foundries, and the cost of fabricating a monolithic 200mm CMOS wafer is less than that of a 150mm wafer using a specialized CCD process. More importantly, the CMOS imager is inherently tolerant to radiation damage. Space missions employing CMOS sensors, such as Deep Space-1 (256x256 format APS) 4 and TEAMSAT (512x512 format APS) 5 , have provided encouraging science data and high contrast images.Ad...

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The first-wall components of the next-generation machines will have to support very high thermal loads. Different solutions have been proposed to handle the energy flux in the scrape-off layer and to prevent the tiles from overheating. The necessity to monitor the tile surface temperature to prevent their damage has stimulated the development of reliable optical diagnostics, in spite of the severe constraints imposed by the hostile reactor environment. We have implemented a new infrared thermal imaging system on the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade machine. It has: ͑1͒ high dynamics to allow measurements in the whole temperature range covered during plasma operation; ͑2͒ high temporal resolution ͑Ͻ1 ms͒ for measurements during fast events as well as edge localized modes ͑ELMs͒ and disruptions; ͑3͒ high spatial resolution to discover hot spots, which can seriously affect plasma operations. © 1997 American Institute of Physics. ͓S0034-6748͑97͒65701-9͔