Characterization of electrical crosstalk in 4T-APS arrays using TCAD simulations

TCAD simulations have been conducted on a CMOS image sensor in order to characterize the electrical component of the crosstalk between pixels through the study of the electric field distribution. The image sensor consists on a linear array of five pinned photodiodes (PPD) with their transmission gates, floating diffusion and reset transistors. The effect of the variations of the thickness of the epitaxial layer has been addressed as well. In fact, the depth of the boundary of the epitaxial layer affects quantum efficiency (QE) so a correlation with crosstalk has been identified.