Performance based CID imaging: past, present, and future

Abstract

The revolutionary charge-coupled device (CCD) was first described by George Smith and Willard Boyle of Bell Laboratories in 1969. Hubert Burke and Gerald Michon of General Electric (GE) followed with the invention of the charge-injection device (CID) in 1973. In the 1970s and 1980s, CID-based cameras were widely used in machine vision applications. By the 1990s, as CMOS sensors were gaining popularity, CIDs were adapted for applications demanding high dynamic range and superior antiblooming performance. CID-based cameras have found their niche in applications requiring extreme radiation tolerance and the high dynamic range scientific imaging. CID imagers have progressed from passive pixel designs using proprietary silicon processes to active pixel devices using conventional CMOS processing. Scientific cameras utilizing active pixel CID sensors have achieved a factor of 7 improvement in read noise (30 electrons (rms) versus 225 electrons (rms)) at vastly increased pixel frequencies (2.1 MHz versus 50 kHz) when compared to passive pixel devices. Radiation-hardened video cameras employing active pixel CIDs is the enabling technology in the world's only solid-state radiation-hardened color camera, which is tolerant to total ionizing radiation doses of more than 5 Mega-rad. Performance-based CID imaging concentrates on leveraging the advantages that CIDs provide for demanding applications.