Radioactivity in HgCdTe devices: potential source of “snowballs”

We hypothesize that the “snowballs” observed in HgCdTe infrared detectors are caused by natural radioactivity in the devices themselves. As characterized by Hilbert (2009) in the WFC3 flight IR array (FPA165), “snowballs” are transient events that instantaneously saturate a few pixels and deposit a few hundred thousand electrons over a ~5-pixel (~100-um) diameter region. In 2008, prior to flight of detector FPA165, Hilbert (2009) detected 21 snowballs during thermal vaccum test three (TV3) and inferred a rate of ~1100 ± 200 snowballs per year per cm of the HgCdTe detector. Alpha particles emitted from either (or both) naturally radioactive thorium and/or uranium, at ~1 ppm concentrations within the device, can explain the observed characteristics of the “snowballs.” If thorium is present, up to four distinctly observable snowballs should appear at the same location on the pixel array over the course of many years. While the indium in the bump bonds is almost entirely the radioactive isotope In-115, and 12% of the cadmium is naturally radioactive Cd-113, both of those emit only betas, which are too penetrating and not energetic enough to match the observed characteristics of “snowballs.” Also, the Cd-113 emission rate is much less than that of the observed