Design of High Resolution High Sensitivity EMCCD Camera

A high resolution and high sensitivity camera was developed using back illuminated, frame transfer on-chip electron multiplying gain CCD(EMCCD) with 1024×1024 pixels named CCD201 from E2V technologies. The CCD timing generated by a CPLD affords the normal EMCCD diver timing via a vertical clock driver chip EL7156. A programmable control voltage power source is adopted for the electron multiplying voltage to realize program-EM control. A CCD analog front-end chip VSP2566 provide correlated double sampling (CDS) and 16 bits analog-to-digital conversion for the output of CCD201. By adopting fiber communication technology and USB technology, the image can be acquired by remote computer in real-time. Experimental results show that the optical dynamic range can exceed 70dB, and the remote programmable control electron multiplication can operate at the gain over 0.1e/ADU. The EMCCD imaging system can be applied in the low light level imaging area and radiation diagnosis field.