Non-blooming and other advances in silicon target camera tube technology

Blooming has been a problem in many applications of Silicon Target Camera Tubes. The blooming is a result of the lateral transfer of charge in the bulk of the silicon substrate. This "blooming" condition has placed a serious limitation on some applications of silicon target camera tubes including: (1) Low light level surveillance at night in the presence of man-made light sources such as car headlights and street lamps when these light sources "bloom" in the picture. (2) Indoor surveillance when bright lights are in the field of view and information next to the lights is obscured. (3) Studio and outdoor use in Black-and-White and Color Television broadcasting when specular reflections from musical instruments and football helmets, etc., are present. Most past approaches to the blooming problem have been directed toward minimizing the effect rather than eliminating the problem. This paper will discuss recent non-blooming silicon target camera tube designs that have eliminated blooming as a problem. In fact these non-blooming silicon camera tubes are now among the best camera tubes available for looking at bright lights or other high contrast scenes where it is desirable to overexpose the tube to bring out objects in the dimly illuminated position of the picture. The discussion will also include a comparison of non-blooming types to standard silicon target camera tubes.