A 47 Million Pixel High-Performance Interline CCD Image Sensor

A 47-million-pixel (47Mp) interline charge-coupleddevice (CCD) image sensor, the world's highest resolution interline-transfer CCD, has been developed for industrial, machine vision, and aerial photography applications. The sensor features a 5.5-μm pixel, 16-output low-noise amplifier and a lowsmear, fast-dump gate, horizontal lateral overflow drain, and ON-chip temperature sensor. One challenge to manufacture this large sensor is stitching the sensor with different lithography tools, while still achieving equal or better image performance than its predecessor.