High Conversion-Gain Pinned-Photodiode Pump-Gate Pixels in 180-nm CMOS Process
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Song Chen; Jiaju Ma; Donald B. Hondongwa; Eric R. Fossum
- Source
- IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, Vol 5, Iss 6, Pp 509-517 (2017)
- Subject
- CMOS image sensor
high conversion gain
pump gate
low light imaging
pinned photodiode
Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
TK1-9971
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 2168-6734
This paper presents the design and characterization of high conversion-gain pixels in a 180-nm CMOS image sensor process. By reducing overlapping capacitance between a floating diffusion and transfer gate, output-referred pixel conversion gain as high as 118uV/eand read noise as low as 1.8erms are experimentally achieved without significant lag. A dark current of 38 pA/cm2 is measured at 60°C. Comparison between the proposed devices and a baseline pixel regarding device structure and characterization results is also presented.