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The paper describes important design features and resulting performance of a color VGA format Frame Interline Transfer CCD image sensor that utilizes Charge Carrier Multiplication for increased sensitivity and low noise. The description includes the details of the photo site design that is formed by a pinned photodiode with a lateral anti-blooming drain. The design details of the photo-site transfer gate region are also given together with the design details of the vertical CCD register that result in a fast charge transfer into the memory and thus low smear. Since the device is not using the vertical overflow anti-blooming drain for the booming control, the near IR performance is not reduced. The color sensing capability is achieved by employing either RGB or complementary color filters. The remaining focus of the article is on the typical characterization results such as the CTE, image lag, and low dark current. The NIR and color imaging performance at low light levels is investigated in detail and characterized. In conclusion several typical scene color images taken by the camera that uses the developed charge-multiplying FIT CCD image sensor are shown.

The paper describes several important characterization results obtained from the recently developed high performance front side illuminated 1k x 1k Frame Transfer CCD image sensor that employs charge multiplication concept to multiply photo generated charge directly in charge domain before its conversion into a voltage. The description includes the key device design features that were instrumental in obtaining the high performance and then focuses on the key characterization parameters such as excess noise and carrier distribution of the charge multiplication process. The remaining focus of the article is on the characterization methodology and on the obtained results such as the high clocking frequency (35 MHz), low serial register clock voltage operation, high sensitivity at low light levels, high QE, high blue response, no image lag, overload performance of lateral anti blooming drain structure, etc. In conclusion, several imaging comparisons between the conventional state of the art CCD image sensor and the developed charge-multiplying image sensor are also shown.