43- and 50-Mp High-Performance Interline CCD Image Sensors

This paper describes the design and performance of two new high-resolution interline charge-coupled device image sensors for use in industrial, machine vision, and aerial photography applications. These sensors feature 4.5-μm pixels, 4 outputs, fast dump gate, horizontal lateral overflow drain and vertical electronic shutter. The 43-Mp sensor has a 35-mm optical format and the 50-Mp sensor has a larger format with a 2.175:1 aspect ratio that matches many modern mobile phone displays. This paper discusses the challenges and solutions to manufacture such large sensors with superior image quality such as uniformity, read noise, dark current, smear, transfer gate blooming, lag and so on.