Electro-optical performance characterization of charge coupled device for Directional Polarimetric Camera

Abstract The directional polarimetric camera (DPC) is a space-borne polarimetric sensor which has the characteristics of ultra-wide angle and low-distortion imaging. The charge coupled device (CCD) detector is the core component of the photoelectric conversation for DPC which is used to obtain multi-angle, multi-spectrum polarization information, so it is necessary to measure its electric-optical performance comprehensively before installed in the DPC. Instrumentation is proposed and developed with the aim to evaluate the electro-optical performance of array CCD. The instrument mainly consists of light source subsystem, detector imaging subsystem and detector refrigeration subsystem with the structure of optical-mechanical-electric integration. The photoelectric response performance and the spectral characteristics of the detector are comprehensively and quantitatively tested and analyzed. The key parameters, such as quantum efficiency, dark current, full well capacity and system gain are measured; the spectrum response of the detector is measured from 400nm to 940nm with the spectral resolution around 1nm. The experimental results show that the CCD used for DPC has no defective pixels, the system gain is 0.0245DN/e-, the full well charge is 138.8ke-/pixel, the dark current is 990.5e-/pixel/s when the detector works at 6℃. The photo response non-uniformity under different wavelengths is better than 3% and the linearity error under different wavelengths is less than 1%. The quantum efficiency has a strong dependence on temperature in the near-infrared band, the maximum fluctuation of QE in 865nm and 910nm is 5.84% and 6.65%, respectively, in the temperature range from 0℃ to 20℃. The Instrumentation can be used in the screening and testing the electro-optical performance of scientific grade CCD.