Robert Joseph Strain

Conductively connected charge-coupled device

A new kind of charge-coupled device, the conductively connected charge-coupled device (C4D) has been built and operated. This device is formed by providing self-aligned, source-drain diffusions (or implants) between adjacent, refractory electrodes of a two-phase, ion implanted-barrier CCD. These implants eliminate the inherently unstable exposed channel region presently found in CCDs with coplanar gates, without resorting to overlapping gates. Shift registers ranging from 16 to 128 b in length were evaluated and in spite of low mobilities (80 cm2/V.s) and low barrier heights (2-3 V), incomplete transfer losses of 0.2 percent per transfer were measured at 1 MHz clock frequency. Fabrication has been demonstrated to be quite compatible with p-channel refractory gate IGFET technology, and because the sensitive interelectrode region of the C4D is heavily doped, these devices should show the same reliability as conventional circuits made with the same technology.