Shortwave infrared 512 × 2 line sensor for earth resources applications

A buttable 512 × 2 IRCCD line image sensor was developed with Pd
2
Si Schottky-barrier detectors for operation with passive cooling at 120 K in the shortwave infrared (1.1-2.5 µm) band. This monolithic Silicon line imager has 30-µm detectors with 75 percent fill factor and on-chip CCD multiplexers providing one video output for each 512 detector band. The measured performance of the 512 × 2 Pd
2
Si IRCCD line imager operating at a temperature of 120 K and optical integration time of 4 ms includes a signal-to-noise ratio of 241 for irradiance of
7.2 \micro
W/cm
²
at
\gamma = 1.65 \micro
m, a dynamic range of 5000, and modulation transfer function greater than 60 percent at the Nyquist frequency. Belmish-free imagers with 3 percent nonuniformity under illumination and nonlinearity of 1.25 percent were produced. The total power dissipation of the imager chip is 18 mW.