Просмотр новости
Найдите то, что Вас интересует
Спутники
РН
SpaceX
Роскосмос
NASA
СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASA
Jupiter’s orbit is one of the harshest places in the solar system when it comes to radiation exposure. The planet has a potent magnetic field that extends out past its huge system of moons, and that field breaks down and ionizes sulfur dioxide gas spewed by the volcanic moon Io, feeding a giant radiation belt of fast-moving charged particles. It’s a challenging environment in which to operate a camera, to say the least.A self-healing CMOS imager could help extend the lifetime of cameras sent into such high-radiation areas. The imager, presented last month at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, also performs aggressive compression to minimize the amount of data a spacecraft has to transmit from faraway locales like Io. The imager could also be used in satellites in Earth’s orbit, which catch damage from cosmic rays, too.Engineers controlling Interplanetary craft have already healed radiation-damaged circuits using heat. In December 2023, NASA used the method to repair JunoCam, a visible-light camera in orbit around Jupiter. By its 56th orbit, all of Juno’s images taken with the tool were corrupted by radiation damage. The NASA team tried heating the entire camera to see if it would help—and it worked. As the spacecraft approached Io again, images began streaming in.The new self-healing imager system is designed to fix these kinds of problems as they arise, one pixel at a time.At the heart of the prototype imager is a 128-by-128-pixel array. As in other CMOS imagers, each pixel is made up of a photodiode and several transistors to amplify and control the photodetector’s signal. Other circuits on the chip detect regions of interest in the images by searching for edges, performing image compression, and reading out the pixels by row and column. Not all of the data in an image is important, says Quan Cheng, who worked on the prototype imager at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzen, and at Kyoto University. Cheng, who is now at Brown University, presented the circuit design at ISSCC. “We just capture the region of interest.” That cuts down on the imager’s data output by about 75 percent.Fixing Radiation Damage to ElectronicsRadiation harms circuits in multiple ways, says Cheng. Bombardment by high-speed protons, electrons, and gamma rays can trap charges in the semiconductor and degrade the oxide layer used for insulation in CMOS devices. Radiation can also knock atoms out of their places in the semiconductor crystal. All that adds up to damaged pixels, current flowing when no photons are being detected in the pixel array—called “dark current”—and higher current leakage in other parts of the chip. Adding a bit of heat—slowly through a process called annealing—can fix much of this damage. The annealing heat provides enough energy to allow trapped charges to escape and move atoms back into place to repair the crystalline structure of the silicon.The imager detects damaged or “hot” pixels by periodically performing a readout while the camera is shuttered and sensing whether any pixels exceed a defined current threshold. To heal a damaged pixel, the system heats it by applying a strong current. Imaging can still be performed by other parts of the array while a pixel is healing. During the healing process, readouts from the affected column of pixels are “masked” by a control circuit. The line that’s blacked out of such an image is filled in by averaging the readouts from pixels in the columns adjacent to it. Damage to digital logic in the imager can also be healed. The chip is designed to detect logic errors and similarly heats up transistors by applying a strong voltage pulse.The team tested the chip by bombarding it with a radiation dose that’s equivalent to what the imager would experience during 30 days near Jupiter, about 20 kilograys. Radiation exposure increased dark current in the device by about 181 times, making an image unrecognizable. Four rounds of healing led to nearly full recovery of the image, and almost entirely eliminated current leakage in the logic section caused by radiation damage as well.The design is not intended to replace other radiation hardening approaches such as adding shielding, but as an add-on, says Longyang Lin, a microelectronics researcher at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen who worked with Cheng. “It’s intended to further extend the lifetime” of imagers, he says.“Their method requires far less space than competitive approaches by taking advantage of the addressability of the pixel array and pulsing power into the target circuit,” says Matt Francis, CEO of Ozark Integrated Circuits, in Arkansas, which specializes in circuits for extreme environments. Hardening semiconductors can entail enclosing sensors or using different materials with wider bandgaps. These designs tend to take up more real estate on a chip, or increase costs, says Francis.
Jupiter’s orbit is one of the harshest places in the solar system when it comes to radiation exposure. The planet has a potent magnetic field that extends out past its huge system of moons, and that field breaks down and ionizes sulfur dioxide gas spewed by the volcanic moon Io, feeding a giant radiation belt of fast-moving charged particles. It’s a challenging environment in which to operate a camera, to say the least.
A self-healing CMOS imager could help extend the lifetime of cameras sent into such high-radiation areas. The imager, presented last month at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, also performs aggressive compression to minimize the amount of data a spacecraft has to transmit from faraway locales like Io. The imager could also be used in satellites in Earth’s orbit, which catch damage from cosmic rays, too.
Engineers controlling Interplanetary craft have already healed radiation-damaged circuits using heat. In December 2023, NASA used the method to repair JunoCam, a visible-light camera in orbit around Jupiter. By its 56th orbit, all of Juno’s images taken with the tool were corrupted by radiation damage. The NASA team tried heating the entire camera to see if it would help—and it worked. As the spacecraft approached Io again, images began streaming in.
The new self-healing imager system is designed to fix these kinds of problems as they arise, one pixel at a time.
At the heart of the prototype imager is a 128-by-128-pixel array. As in other CMOS imagers, each pixel is made up of a photodiode and several transistors to amplify and control the photodetector’s signal. Other circuits on the chip detect regions of interest in the images by searching for edges, performing image compression, and reading out the pixels by row and column.
Not all of the data in an image is important, says Quan Cheng, who worked on the prototype imager at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzen, and at Kyoto University. Cheng, who is now at Brown University, presented the circuit design at ISSCC. “We just capture the region of interest.” That cuts down on the imager’s data output by about 75 percent.
Fixing Radiation Damage to ElectronicsRadiation harms circuits in multiple ways, says Cheng. Bombardment by high-speed protons, electrons, and gamma rays can trap charges in the semiconductor and degrade the oxide layer used for insulation in CMOS devices. Radiation can also knock atoms out of their places in the semiconductor crystal. All that adds up to damaged pixels, current flowing when no photons are being detected in the pixel array—called “dark current”—and higher current leakage in other parts of the chip. Adding a bit of heat—slowly through a process called annealing—can fix much of this damage. The annealing heat provides enough energy to allow trapped charges to escape and move atoms back into place to repair the crystalline structure of the silicon.
The imager detects damaged or “hot” pixels by periodically performing a readout while the camera is shuttered and sensing whether any pixels exceed a defined current threshold. To heal a damaged pixel, the system heats it by applying a strong current. Imaging can still be performed by other parts of the array while a pixel is healing. During the healing process, readouts from the affected column of pixels are “masked” by a control circuit. The line that’s blacked out of such an image is filled in by averaging the readouts from pixels in the columns adjacent to it. Damage to digital logic in the imager can also be healed. The chip is designed to detect logic errors and similarly heats up transistors by applying a strong voltage pulse.
The team tested the chip by bombarding it with a radiation dose that’s equivalent to what the imager would experience during 30 days near Jupiter, about 20 kilograys. Radiation exposure increased dark current in the device by about 181 times, making an image unrecognizable. Four rounds of healing led to nearly full recovery of the image, and almost entirely eliminated current leakage in the logic section caused by radiation damage as well.
The design is not intended to replace other radiation hardening approaches such as adding shielding, but as an add-on, says Longyang Lin, a microelectronics researcher at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen who worked with Cheng. “It’s intended to further extend the lifetime” of imagers, he says.
“Their method requires far less space than competitive approaches by taking advantage of the addressability of the pixel array and pulsing power into the target circuit,” says Matt Francis, CEO of Ozark Integrated Circuits, in Arkansas, which specializes in circuits for extreme environments. Hardening semiconductors can entail enclosing sensors or using different materials with wider bandgaps. These designs tend to take up more real estate on a chip, or increase costs, says Francis.
| # | Наименование новости | Тональность | Информативность | Дата публикации |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Satellites Overwhelm Space Telescopes With “Railroad” Tracks | 0 | 8.61 | 14-06-2026 |
| 2 | Почему космос убивает электронику Космос убивает электронику не потому, что ... | 0 | 7 | 11-07-2026 |
| 3 | Optical Metasurface Captures Solar Magnetic Fields | 0 | 10.98 | 18-06-2026 |
| 4 | NASA’s new AI space chip could let spacecraft think for themselves | 0 | 9.09 | 15-05-2026 |
| 5 | #Военные_новости_США@gunsandtanksoftheworld NASA тестирует радиационно-стойкий процессор для «умных» космических аппаратов NASA ... | 0 | 7 | 21-07-2026 |
| 6 | Учёные считают, что специальный радиационно-защитный жилет в будущем может существенно ... | 0 | 8.03 | 13-08-2026 |
| 7 | Постоянные магниты против солнечных бурь: сможет ли неодим защитить космонавтов в дальнем космосе? | 3 | 7 | 12-07-2026 |
| 8 | 📰 Космический процессор BAE Systems Endura: радиация не помеха для ... | 7 | 7 | 28-06-2026 |
| 9 | Radiation vest tested on NASA moonshot can cut astronauts' exposure in solar storms, study suggests | 0 | 6.86 | 12-08-2026 |