Fixed-Pattern Noise Induced by Transmission Gate in Pinned 4T CMOS Image Sensor Pixels

Author

Wang, Xinyang ; Rao, Padmakumar R. ; Theuwissen, Albert J P

Author_Institution

Dept. of Microelectron./DIMES, Delft Univ. of Technol.

fYear

2006

fDate

19-21 Sept. 2006

Firstpage

331

Lastpage

334

Abstract

In this paper, we present the characterization and analysis of fixed-pattern noise (FPN) in CMOS image sensor (CIS) pixels fabricated in CMOS 0.18-mum process. The experimental results demonstrate that the dark signal degradation of pinned 4T CIS is mainly due to the dark current generated from the transmission gate (TG) instead of the photodiode (PD). From our investigations of gate voltage/charge transfer time - dark current characterization and temperature dependencies, we found that hot-carrier (H-C) induced impact ionization and trap-induced leakage current are the main mechanism of sensor performance degradation

Keywords

CMOS image sensors; circuit noise; hot carriers; impact ionisation; leakage currents; photoconductivity; 0.18 micron; 4T CMOS image sensor pixels; CMOS process; dark current; dark signal degradation; fixed-pattern noise; hot-carrier; impact ionization; sensor performance degradation; transmission gate; trap-induced leakage current; CMOS image sensors; CMOS process; Computational Intelligence Society; Dark current; Degradation; Image analysis; Photodiodes; Pixel; Signal generators; Temperature sensors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Device Research Conference, 2006. ESSDERC 2006. Proceeding of the 36th European

Conference_Location

Montreux

ISSN

1930-8876

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0301-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ESSDER.2006.307705

Filename

4099923