Development Of Cryogenic Readout Electronics For Far-Infrared Astronomical Focal Plane Array

We have been developing low power cryogenic readout electronics for space borne large format far-infrared image sensors. As the circuit elements, a fully-depleted-silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) CMOS process was adopted because they keep good static performance even at 4.2 K where where various anomalous behaviors are seen for other types of CMOS transistors. We have designed and fabricated several test circuits with the FD-SOI CMOS process and confirmed that an operational amplifier successfully works with an open loop gain over 1000 and with a power consumption around 1.3 mu W as designed, and the basic digital circuits worked well. These results prove that the FD-SOI CMOS process is a promising candidate of the ideal cryogenic readout electronics for far-infrared astronomical focal plane array sensors.