Design and characterization of a CMOS preamplifier for quantum well infrared photodetectors

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A preamplifier based on the source-follower direct injection (SFDI) topology for use in read-out integrated circuits (ROIC) of quantum-well infrared photodetectors focal plane arrays (QWIP-FPA) is demonstrated. The fabricated circuit shows high linearity, high integration time (from hundreds of μs to few ms) and low current detection capabilities for a wide range of input current (order of few pA). This performance was achieved through the use of a Poly1-Poly2 capacitor that, although presenting some penalties in area consumption, provides a higher linearity, lower leakage current and higher temperature stability than all others capacitors found in literature. Secondary effects such as charge injection and clock feed-through are observed in the experimental results and classical techniques, like the use of DUMMY transistor, are shown to be effective in minimizing these effects and maximizing the linearity of the response. The overall results indicate that this circuit architecture has a great potential to be practically integrated in larger QWIP-FPA ROICs, showing an improved performance relating to previous works in literature.