Innovative diamond photo-detectors for UV astrophysics

Breakthroughs in UV astronomy are strongly dependent on technology improvements. In particular next generation UV space telescopes will require large optics, enhanced effective area, highly efficient UV detectors. Many efforts are currently addressing such issues, mainly focussed on detector technology and lightweight deployable mirrors. This paper will report on diamond-based UV photo-conductors that presently would provide a new opportunity for UV space telescopes in the very next future, because of its high sensitivity, low dark current, visible blindness, high radiation hardness and chemical inertness. This means that next generation focal plane arrays for UV observations would have highly enhanced signal to noise ratio not requiring cooling systems, filters or shielding. This makes diamond detectors suitable for space applications, being compact, lightweight and requiring very low power consumption (10 30 V over tens of nanoamps).