The mechanism and evaluation of hot-carrier-induced performance degradation in 0.18-μm CMOS image sensor

Author

Hsu, T.H. ; Fang, Y.K. ; Yaung, D.N. ; Wuu, S.G. ; Chien, H.C. ; Wang, C.S. ; Lin, J.S. ; Tseng, C.H. ; Chen, S.F. ; Lin, C.S. ; Lin, C.Y.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., National Cheng Kung Univ., Tainan, Taiwan

Volume

25

Issue

6

fYear

2004

fDate

6/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

427

Lastpage

429

Abstract

An effective method to evaluate the hot-carrier-induced pixel performance degradation of 0.18-μm CMOS active pixel sensor has been reported. The hot carriers generated at the source follower transistor and absorbed by the nearby photodiode will cause the pixel performance degradation such as increase of dark signal and decrease of operation range. Based on the detailed measurements through overall operation conditions, a simple method has been proposed to evaluate the degradation induced by the hot carriers and, thus, provides a design guide to predict pixel performance.

Keywords

CMOS image sensors; hot carriers; impact ionisation; photodiodes; 0.18 micron; CMOS active pixel sensor; CMOS image sensor; hot-carrier-induced performance degradation; impact ionization; pixel performance degradation; source follower transistor; CMOS image sensors; CMOS technology; Computational Intelligence Society; Degradation; Hot carrier effects; Hot carriers; Image sensors; Photodiodes; Pixel; Signal generators;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2004.829000

Filename

1302248