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 the Double-Sided Floating-Surface Detector (DS-FSD), 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 100000 to 250000 electrons. The detector is used as the first MOS transistor in a three-stage source-follower configuration with a bandwidth of 150 MHz. The performance of both the traditional Floating-Surface Detector and Double-Sided Floating-Surface Detector (DSFSD) are calculated using a new, simple, model, This model is experimentally verified.