THE DOUBLE-SIDED FLOATING-SURFACE DETECTOR - AN ENHANCED CHARGE-DETECTION ARCHITECTURE FOR CCD IMAGE SENSORS

A new high speed, low noise, nondestructive charge detector, called th e Double-Sided Floating-Surface Detector (DSFSD), which is fabricated in a standard CCD image sensor process, is reported. This detector can be integrated in CCD image sensors and is capable of detecting large charge packets at very low noise levels. Typical values are 5-8 noise electrons (within a bandwidth of 5 MHz) for a charge packet size of 10 0000 to 250000 electrons. The detector is used as the first MOS transi stor in a three-stage source-follower configuration with a bandwidth o f 150 MHz. The performance of both the traditional Floating-Surface De tector and Double-Sided Floating-Surface Detector (DSFSD) are calculat ed using a new, simple, model. This model is experimentally verified.