Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents

Engineering and Technical Services: Aladdin - ...(1Jun94)
The 1024 X 1024 InSb Array
(from the Director's Office, NOAO Newsletter No. 38, 1 June 1994)

Since the last Newsletter, the project has successfully passed a major
milestone.  A bare readout has been tested and the design is a complete
success.  This was a major milestone since any problems at this point
would have required mask changes and a new processing lot, which would
have delayed the project by several months.  Santa Barbara Research
Center (SBRC) is now in the process of wafer testing all the devices in
the first lot to determine yield information.  The next step is to dice
up one of the wafers and proceed to cold testing the bare readout.

The detector critical design review was held in March and that task is
proceeding with the mask design and processing.  There are several
smaller (256 X 256) devices on the mask set which will be used to test
the quality of the detector material.  A paper, "Next Generation in
InSb Arrays:  ALADDIN, the 1024 X 1024 InSb Focal Plane Array
Development Project Status Report" was presented at the SPIE Conference
on Instrumentation in Astronomy in Kona, Hawaii in March.  A copy of the
paper can be obtained by contacting Carol Gregory (cgregory@noao.edu).
Work is continuing on a plan whereby the community can participate with
NOAO in a production run at SBRC of Aladdin FPAs.  More will be
forthcoming on this effort.

In upgrading the detector evaluation test system GoFish for operation
of the Aladdin arrays, we evaluated the performance of the Analogic
ADC4322 16 bit 2 Mhz converter.  We found the converters to perform as
advertised and have incorporated them in our system.  Since they
operate on the +-15 VDC supplies, some care must be taken to eliminate
noise created by the converters from the analog electronics.  A copy of
the test report, "Testing the Analogic ADC4322 Chips," by Dave
Hagelbarger and Julie Heynssens is available from Carol Gregory.

Al Fowler

Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents