Drastically reduced dark current by pulse-time-modulated plasma for precise micro lens fabrication in highly sensitive CCD image sensor

Author

Ishikawa, Y. ; Okigawa, M. ; Ichihashi, Y. ; Samukawa, S.

Author_Institution

Inst. of Fluid Sci., Tohoku Univ., Sendai, Japan

fYear

2003

fDate

8-10 Dec. 2003

Abstract

Highly sensitive charge coupled device image sensors (CCD) have some serious problems such as increased dark current and interface states induced by the plasma etching processes. Especially, UV photon (200 nm to 300 nm) irradiation generates this damage. To solve this problem, we investigated optimum fluorocarbon gas chemistries and the effect of pulse-time-modulated (TM) plasma. We found that the dark current in CCDs was drastically reduced by carefully selecting gas chemistries and using TM plasma.

Keywords

CCD image sensors; dark conductivity; interface states; microlenses; sputter etching; 200 to 300 nm; CCD image sensor; UV photon irradiation; charge coupled device image sensors; dark current reduction; interface states; micro lens fabrication; optimum fluorocarbon gas chemistries; pulse-time-modulated plasma etching; Charge coupled devices; Charge-coupled image sensors; Dark current; Fabrication; Image sensors; Interface states; Lenses; Plasma applications; Plasma chemistry; Plasma devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 2003. IEDM '03 Technical Digest. IEEE International

Conference_Location

Washington, DC, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7872-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2003.1269306

Filename

1269306