Development of an image converter of radical design

A long term investigation of thin film sensors, monolithic photo-field effect transistors, and epitaxially diffused phototransistors and photodiodes to meet requirements to produce acceptable all solid state, electronically scanned imaging system, led to the production of an advanced engineering model camera which employs a 200,000 element phototransistor array (organized in a matrix of 400 rows by 500 columns) to secure resolution comparable to commercial television. The full investigation is described for the period July 1962 through July 1972, and covers the following broad topics in detail: (1) sensor monoliths; (2) fabrication technology; (3) functional theory; (4) system methodology; and (5) deployment profile. A summary of the work and conclusions are given, along with extensive schematic diagrams of the final solid state imaging system product

A 192×128 Time Correlated SPAD Image Sensor in 40-nm CMOS Technology

A 192 X 128 pixel single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) time-resolved single photon counting (TCSPC) image sensor is implemented in STMicroelectronics 40-nm CMOS technology. The 13% fill factor, 18.4\,\,\mu \text {m} \times 9.2\,\,\mu \text{m} pixel contains a 33-ps resolution, 135-ns full scale, 12-bit time-to-digital converter (TDC) with 0.9-LSB differential and 5.64-LSB integral nonlinearity (DNL/INL). The sensor achieves a mean 219-ps full-width half-maximum (FWHM) impulse response function (IRF) and is operable at up to 18.6 kframes/s through 64 parallelized serial outputs. Cylindrical microlenses with a concentration factor of 3.25 increase the fill factor to 42%. The median dark count rate (DCR) is 25 Hz at 1.5-V excess bias. A digital calibration scheme integrated into a column of the imager allows off-chip digital process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) compensation of every frame on the fly. Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) results are presented

Design, fabrication, and delivery of a charge injection device as a stellar tracking device

Six 128 x 128 CID imagers fabricated on bulk silicon and with thin polysilicon upper-level electrodes were tested in a star tracking mode. Noise and spectral response were measured as a function of temperature over the range of +25 C to -40 C. Noise at 0 C and below was less than 40 rms carriers/pixel for all devices at an effective noise bandwidth of 150 Hz. Quantum yield for all devices averaged 40% from 0.4 to 1.0 microns with no measurable temperature dependence. Extrapolating from these performance parameters to those of a large (400 x 400) array and accounting for design and processing improvements, indicates that the larger array would show a further improvement in noise performance -- on the order of 25 carriers. A preliminary evaluation of the projected performance of the 400 x 400 array and a representative set of star sensor requirements indicates that the CID has excellent potential as a stellar tracking device

Development of a Portable CMOS Time-Domain Fluorescence Lifetime Imager

Modern laboratory equipments to measure the excited-state lifetime of fluorophores usually include an expensive picosecond pulsed-laser excitation source, a fragile photomultiplier tube, and a large instrument body for optics. A portable and robust device to make fluorescence lifetime measurement in nanosecond scale is of great attraction for chemists and biologists. This dissertation reports the development of a portable LED time-domain fluorimeter from an all-solid-state discrete-component prototype to its advanced CMOS integrated circuit implementation. The motivation of the research is to develop a multiplexed fluorimeter for point-of-care diagnosis. Instruments developed by this novel method have higher fill factor, are more portable, and are fabricated at lower cost

Physical Characteristics, Sensors and Applications of 2D/3DIntegrated CMOS Photodiodes

Two-dimensional photodiodes are reversely biased at a reasonable voltage whereas 3D photodiodes are likely operated at the Geiger mode. How to design integrated 2D and 3D photodiodes is investigated in terms of quantum efficiency, dark current, crosstalk, response time and so on. Beyond photodiodes, a charge supply mechanism provides a proper charge for a high dynamic range of 2D sensing, and a feedback pull-down mechanism expedites the response time of 3D sensing for time-of-flight applications. Particularly, rapid parallel reading at a 3D mode is developed by a bus-sharing mechanism. Using the TSMC 0.35μm 2P4M technology, a 2D/3D-integrated image sensor including P-diffusion_N-well_P-substrate photodiodes, pixel circuits, correlated double sampling circuits, sense amplifiers, a multi-channel time-to-digital converter, column/row decoders, bus-sharing connections/decoders, readout circuits and so on was implemented with a die size of 12mm×12mm. The proposed 2D/3D-integrated image sensor can perceive a 352×288-pixel 2D image and an 88×72-pixel 3D image with a dynamic range up to 100dB and a depth resolution of around 4cm, respectively. Therefore, our image sensor can effectively capture gray-level and depth information of a scene at the same location without additional alignment and post-processing. Finally, the currently available 2D and 3D image sensors are discussed and presented

A 72 × 60 Angle-Sensitive SPAD Imaging Array for Lens-less FLIM

We present a 72 × 60, angle-sensitive single photon avalanche diode (A-SPAD) array for lens-less 3D fluorescence lifetime imaging. An A-SPAD pixel consists of (1) a SPAD to provide precise photon arrival time where a time-resolved operation is utilized to avoid stimulus-induced saturation, and (2) integrated diffraction gratings on top of the SPAD to extract incident angles of the incoming light. The combination enables mapping of fluorescent sources with different lifetimes in 3D space down to micrometer scale. Futhermore, the chip presented herein integrates pixel-level counters to reduce output data-rate and to enable a precise timing control. The array is implemented in standard 180 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and characterized without any post-processing