A low-noise high-sensitivity CMOS image sensor for scientific and industrial applications

A low-noise high-sensitivity CMOS image sensor (CIS) for scientific use is developed and evaluated. The prototype sensor contains 1024(H) × 1024(V) pixels with high performance column-parallel ADCs. The measured maximum quantum efficiency (QE) is 57 % at 660 nm and long-wavelength sensitivity is also enhanced with a large sensing area and the optimized process. In addition, dark current is 0.96 pA/cm
²
at 292 K, temporal random noise in a readout circuitry is 1.17 e
^-
_rms
, and the conversion gain is 124 μV/e
^-
. The implemented CMOS imager using 0.11-μm CIS technology has very high sensitivity of 87 V/lx·sec that is suitable for scientific and industrial applications such as medical imaging, bioimaging, surveillance cameras, etc.