Teh-Hsuang Lee

The pinned photodiode for an interline-transfer CCD image sensor

A pinned photodiode has been developed for use in an interline-transfer CCD. This photoelement has excellent blue response and high charge capacity. Both modeling and experimental results will be presented, including process considerations necessary to avoid unwanted barriers at the diode/transfer-gate edge.

A 1-Megapixel, progressive-scan image sensor with antiblooming control and lag-free operation

A 1024-pixel*1024-pixel interline charge-coupled device (IL CCD) image sensor has been developed. It incorporates antiblooming and electronic exposure control while eliminating lag and obtaining a high responsivity. The novel features of this device include a noninterlaced, or progressive-scan, architecture and dual-horizontal registers that can be used to clock out the image area by one or two lines at a time. These features make it well suited for applications demanding high-resolution-image capture from a single, high-speed scan. The progressive-scan architecture of this device covers the same resolution in an electronic-camera application as that of a 2-million-element, interlaced device. >

A 1.4 million element, full frame CCD image sensor with vertical overflow drain for anti-blooming and low color crosstalk

Blooming and color crosstalk must be greatly suppressed in solid-state image sensors for nearly all imaging applications. A vertical overflow drain has been developed for a 1.4 megapixel image sensor for blooming suppression and low color crosstalk. The overflow drain is formed using a uniform flat p-well. This paper describes the modeling, fabrication, and experimental data associated with implementing vertical overflow in this device.

A 360 000-pixel charge-coupled color-image sensor for imaging photographic negative

A 360 000-pixel color-image sensor for imaging photographic negatives is described. The charge-coupled image sensor consists of a 740 (H) × 242 (V) × 2 image area and dual horizontal output registers. The design, spectral response, charge capacity, noise, and image quality of the sensor are discussed. The sensor achieves a charge capacity of 1 × 106electrons per pixel and a noise of 200 rms electrons per pixel, for a dynamic range of 70 dB. Color sensitivity is obtained by an organic color-filter array fabricated on the sensor.

A 360,000 pixel color image sensor for imaging photographic negatives

We describe a740(H) \times 242(V) × 2 charge-coupled color image sensor for imaging photographic negatives. The sensor achieves charge capacity of1 \times 10^{6}electrons per pixel, random noise of 300 rms electrons per pixel, and dynamic range of 70 dB. Sensor design, spectral sensitivity, charge capacity, and noise are discussed.

A large area 1.3-megapixel full-frame CCD image sensor with a lateral-overflow drain and a transparent gate electrode

A large-area, 1.3 million pixel, full-frame CCD (charge coupled device) image sensor has been developed that incorporates both a lateral-overflow drain (LOD) for antiblooming control and a transparent indium-tin oxide (ITO) gate electrode for increased photosensitivity. The LOD offers high responsivity, extremely linear photoresponse, and ultrahigh optical overload protection. The replacement of one polysilicon phase with ITO increases the quantum efficiency at 400 nm to 15.8% from the 1.5% for the standard double polysilicon gate electrode process. The LOD design allows for antiblooming suppression in excess of 43000 times the saturation signal while maintaining better than 1% nonlinearity.<<ETX>>

A novel solid-state image sensor for image recording at 2,000 frames per second

A very high-speed image sensor for image recording at up to 2,000 full or 12,000 partial frames per second consists of a 192 V × 248 H array of photocapacitors. For high-speed operation, the image-sensing area is divided into six blocks, each block having 32 parallel outputs. The blocks are addressed sequentially, and the 32 outputs are sensed simultaneously. The sensor dynamic range is 46 dB at 2,000 fps. Spectral sensitivity, noise, and spatial resolution are discussed.

High‐resolution interline image sensors using two‐phase CCD technology

Two interline, 30 frames/second, high‐resolution image sensors are described that use two‐phase charge coupled device (CCD) technology. One is a two‐megapixel, interlaced high‐definition television, sensor, and the other is a 1‐megapixel, progressive‐scan sensor for machine vision applications. These sensors include features such as dual‐horizontal CCD readout, antiblooming protection, electronic shutter capability, low smear, and no lag.©1994 John Wiley & Sons Inc

A four-million pixel CCD image sensor

The authors have developed an ultra-high-resolution, full-frame CCD imager of 2048*2048 pixels. The pixel size is 9 mu m*9 mu m. The sensor has dual readout registers to increase the data rate. It is designed for a horizontal clock rate of 20 MHz. With the dual line readout mode, it takes 114 ms to read a frame. The experimental device has less than 0.5 nA/cm/sup 2/ dark current at room temperature, corresponding to about 25 electrons of dark shot noise at 200 ms frame time, including both integration and read time. The output amplifier, made of a two-stage source follower, has a sensitivity of 10 mV per electron. With correlated double sampling, the output amplifier contributes about 10 noise electrons at the 20 MHz data rate. Thus, the dark shot noise is the dominant noise component unless the imager is cooled. The charge capacity of the CCD is 85000 electrons, giving a dynamic range of 3000. A charge transfer efficiency of 0.99999 has been observed.<<ETX>>An ultra-high resolution image sensor was developed for industrial and scientific applications. The imager is a full-frame CCD sensor, consisting of 2048 × 2048 pixels, and its image area measures 18.43 mm × 18.43 mm. The pixel size is 9 microns × 9 microns. The sensor has dual readout registers to increase the data rate. The sensor could be operated in the single or dual readout register mode depending on the users frame rate requirements and the data capture system. The architecture of this imager is suitable for accumulation mode operation, which results in low dark current of less than 10 pA/cm2 at room temperature. The charge transfer efficiency is 0.99999 for horizontal clock rate up to 20 MHz.

A lag-free 1024*1024 progressive scan interline CCD image sensor with antiblooming and exposure control

A 1024*1024 IL CCD (charge coupled device) image sensor has been developed that incorporates antiblooming and electronic exposure control while eliminating lag and obtaining a high responsivity. The incorporation of the antiblooming structure and electronic exposure control has been achieved without sacrificing other important device characteristics such as lag, smear, photoresponse linearity, and sensitivity. The progressive-scan architecture of this device offers the same resolution in an electronic-camera application as that of a two-million element, interlaced device. A noninterlaced scan with dual-horizontal registers makes it well suited for high-speed, machine vision applications.<<ETX>>