Performance Analysis of a Large Photoactive Area CMOS Line Sensor for Fast, Time-Resolved Spectroscopy Applications

The performance of a fabricated CMOS line sensor based on the lateral drift-field photodiode (LDPD)(1) concept is described. A new pixel structure was designed to decrease the charge transfer time across the photoactive area. Synopsys TCAD simulations were performed to design a proper intrinsic lateral drift-field within the pixel. The line sensor was fabricated in the 0.35 mu m CMOS technology, and further characterized using a tailored photon-transfer method(2) and the EMVA 1288 standard(3). The basic parameters such as spectral responsivity, photo-response non-uniformity and dark current were measured at fabricated sensor samples. A special attention was paid to charge transfer time characterization(4) and the evaluation of crosstalk between neighboring pixels - two major concerns attained during the development. It is shown that the electro-optical characteristics of the developed line sensor are comparable to those delivered by CCD line sensors available on the market, which are normally superior in performance compared to their CMOS based counterparts, but offering additional features such as the possibility of time gating, non-destructive readout, and charge accumulation over several cycles: approaches used to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the sensor output.