A 5-µm pitch single sensor row quadrilinear CCD imager

This letter presents the design, processing, and experimental results obtained on a 5-µm pitch quadrilinear CCD with a single row of sensors, the highest pitch so far reported for CCD line arrays. A conventional three-level polysilicon n-channel BCCD process was used. Isolation between neighboring sensors is performed by the built in depletion region between the photodiodes only, no channel stop or field shield is used for lateral isolation. The CCD shift registers are designed with 3-µm layout rules. A transfer inefficiency of 1E-5 and a photoresponse non-uniformity (PRNU) of ±2.5 percent were measured. The MTF at the Nyquist limit (100 1p/mm) for 500-nm illumination is 45 percent.