A monolithic InSb charge-coupled infrared imaging device

Abstract

Monolithic charge-coupled infrared imaging devices (CCIRIDs) have been fabricated in InSb and infrared detection and readout with the arrays demonstrated. The CCIRIDs which have been operated are 20-element linear arrays incorporating lateral transfer from MOS detectors into an InSb CCD shift register. The 20-bit register is a four-phase, surface channel, overlapping gate CCD. The charge transfer efficiency (CTE) has been measured by electrical injection of signal using the fat zero (FZ) inputs. At f <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</inf> = 100 kHz and 77°K, CTE is ≥0.995 operating with a FZ. The CTE is limited by parallel-edge surface state loss and correlates with the surface state density which is in the 5×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</sup> - to 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">12</sup> -cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-2</sup> -eV <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> range for the devices tested. Charge integration in the photo-gates, transfer into the register, and serial read-out of the 20 detector signals have been demonstrated for the InSb CCIRIDs.