Avalanche Photodiodes in Submicron CMOS Technologies for High-Sensitivity Imaging
Avalanche Photodiodes in Submicron CMOS Technologies for High-Sensitivity Imaging
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用于高灵敏度成像的亚微米 CMOS 技术中的雪崩光电二极管
DOI：
10.5772/15178
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Richardson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Betta;L. Pancheri;D. Stoppa;R. Henderson;J. Richardson
基于真空的器件，如光电倍增管（PMT）和微通道板（MCP），多年来一直是大多数需要光子计数和计时的应用的首选传感器（Renker，2004）。虽然提供了非常好的灵敏度，噪声和定时特性，这些光电探测器具有许多缺点：它们体积庞大，易碎，对磁场敏感;它们需要非常高的工作电压，并具有大的功耗;在其高性能模型中，提供良好的空间分辨率，它们仍然非常昂贵。对于高灵敏度成像应用，合适的解决方案是CCD相机与MCP图像增强器（I-CCD）或电子倍增器（EM-CCD）耦合（Dussault & Hoess，2004）。然而，除了非常昂贵之外，它们的性能在极端时间分辨测量中并不完全令人满意。出于成本、小型化、坚固性、可靠性、设计灵活性、集成密度和信号处理能力的原因，全固态解决方案（并且特别是CMOS技术）将是高度期望的。在迄今报道的先进CMOS图像传感器中，在高灵敏度和快速定时方面最有前途的是基于单光子雪崩二极管（SPAD）的CMOS图像传感器。SPAD是以所谓的盖革模式工作的雪崩光电二极管，即，偏置在击穿之上，以便对单光子敏感（Cova等人，1996年）。尽管这些传感器已经开发了30多年，特别是由于米兰理工大学的Cova教授的团队，并且单个设备已经达到了出色的性能（Ghioni等人，2007年），直到最近，制作基于SPAD的相机的前景才变得可行。CMOS技术中的第一个基于SPAD的像素阵列仅在几年前被证明（Rochas等人，2003年a），但从那时起，进一步的发展迅速，也促进了商业，高电压CMOS技术（HV-CMOS）的可用性，旨在为电力电子集成电路，以及专门定制的“成像”过程，这已经推动了巨大的市场，
Vacuum based devices, such as Photo Multiplier Tubes (PMT) and Micro Channel Plates (MCP), have been for many years the sensors of choice for most applications calling for photon counting and timing (Renker, 2004). While providing very good sensitivity, noise and timing characteristics, these photodetectors feature a number of disadvantages: they are bulky, fragile, and sensitive to magnetic fields; they require very high operation voltages, and have large power consumption; in their high-performance models, providing good spatial resolution, they are still very expensive. For high-sensitivity imaging applications, suitable solutions are represented by CCD cameras coupled with either MCP Image Intensifiers (I-CCDs) or Electron Multipliers (EM-CCDs) (Dussault & Hoess, 2004). However, besides being very expensive, their performance is not completely satisfactory in extreme time resolved measurements. For reasons of cost, miniaturization, ruggedness, reliability, design flexibility, integration density, and signal processing capabilities, a fully solid-state solution (and, particularly, CMOS technology) would be highly desirable. Among the advanced CMOS image sensors so far reported, the most promising ones in terms of high sensitivity and fast timing are those based on Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs). SPADs are avalanche photodiodes operated in the so-called Geiger mode, i.e., biased above breakdown, so as to be sensitive to single photons (Cova et al., 1996). Although these sensors have been developed for more than 30 years, in particular owing to the group of Prof. Cova at Politecnico di Milano, and single devices have reached outstanding performance (Ghioni et al., 2007), only recently the perspective of making a SPAD-based camera has become feasible. The first SPAD-based pixel arrays in CMOS technology have been demonstrated only a few years ago (Rochas et al., 2003a), but since then further developments rapidly followed, also facilitated by the availability of commercial, High-Voltage CMOS technologies (HV-CMOS) aimed at integrated circuits for power electronics, as well as of specially tailored “imaging” processes, which have been boosted by the huge market of