IEEE Electron Device Letters · 2020 · 21 citations · 8 references
EngineeringComputer EngineeringElectrical EngineeringMicroelectronicsSemiconductor DevicesSensorsCmos Circuit DesignComplementary Metal-oxide-semiconductor TechnologyImage SensorsLow-noise Circuit DesignNoise In Electronic DevicesNoise In Semiconductor DevicesCmos Image SensorsComplementary Metal-oxide-semiconductor Image SensorsConversion GainDynamic ImagingDynamic RangeImage Sensor TechnologyPixel ArchitectureSaturation
This letter introduces a 5-transistors (5T) implementation of CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) pixels enabling the combination of deep sub-electron noise performance with wide dynamic range (DR). The 5T pixel presents a new technique to reduce the sense node capacitance without any process refinements or voltage level increase and features adjustable conversion gain (CG) to enable wide dynamic imaging. The implementation of the proposed 5T pixel in a standard 180nm CIS process demonstrates the combination of a measured high CG of 250 <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">μ</sub> V/e and low CG of 115 <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">μ</sub> V/e with a saturation level of about 6500e offering photo-electron counting capabilitywithout compromising the DR and readout speed.
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Photon-number-resolving megapixel image sensor at room temperature without avalanche gain
Jiaju Ma, Saleh Masoodian, Dakota A. Starkey et al. · Optica · 2017 · 129 citations · Full text