Smart cmos image sensors and applications,

310 Pages·2019·23.381 MB·English

by  JUN OHTA

Smart CMOS Image
Sensors and Applications
OPTICAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Founding Editor Brian J. Thompson
University of Rochester Rochester, New York
Nonlinear Optics: Teory, Numerical Modeling, and Applications, Partha P. Banerjee
Semiconductor Laser Fundamentals, Toshiaki Suhara
High-Performance Backbone Network Technology, edited by Naoaki Yamanaka
Organic Light-Emitting Diodes: Principles, Characteristics, and Processes, Jan Kalinowski
Micro-Optomechatronics, Hiroshi Hosaka, Yoshitada Katagiri, Terunao Hirota, and Kiyoshi Itao
Microoptics Technology: Second Edition, Nicholas F. Borrelli
Organic Photovoltaics: Mechanism, Materials, and Devices, edited by Sam-Shajing Sun and
Niyazi Serdar Saracftci
Physics of Optoelectronics, Michael A. Parker
Image Sensors and Signal Processor for Digital Still Cameras, Junichi Nakamura
GMPLS Technologies: Broadband Backbone Networks and Systems, Naoaki Yamanaka, Kohei
Shiomoto, and Eiji Oki
Electromagnetic Teory and Applications for Photonic Crystals, Kiyotoshi Yasumoto
Encyclopedic Handbook of Integrated Circuits, edited by Kenichi Iga and Yasuo Kokubun
Laser Safety Management, Ken Barat
Optics in Magnetic Multilayers and Nanostructures, Štefan Višňovsky´
Applied Microphotonics, edited by Wes R. Jamroz, Roman Kruzelecky, and Emile I. Haddad
Polymer Fiber Optics: Materials, Physics, and Applications, Mark G. Kuzyk
Lens Design, Fourth Edition, Milton Laikin
Photonics: Principles and Practices, Abdul Al-Azzawi
Gas Lasers, edited by Masamori Endo and Robert F. Walker
Organic Field-Efect Transistors, Zhenan Bao and Jason Locklin
Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing: Technologies and Applications, edited by Hans Joerg
Tiele and Marcus Nebeling
Terahertz Spectroscopy: Principles and Applications, edited by Susan L. Dexheimer
Slow Light: Science and Applications, edited by Jacob B. Khurgin and Rodney S. Tucker
Near-Earth Laser Communications, edited by Hamid Hemmati
Photoacoustic Imaging and Spectroscopy, edited by Lihong V. Wang
Handbook of Optical and Laser Scanning, Second edition, Gerald F. Marshall, Glenn E. Stutz
Tunable Laser Applications, Second Edition, edited by F. J. Duarte
Laser Beam Shaping Applications, Second edition, Fred M. Dickey, Todd E. Lizotte
Lightwave Engineering, Yasuo Kokubun
Laser Safety: Tools and Training, edited by Ken Barat
Computational Methods for Electromagnetic and Optical Systems, John M. Jarem, Partha
P. Banerjee
Biochemical Applications of Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy, edited by Vladislav Yakovlev
Optical Methods of Measurement: Wholefeld Techniques, Second Edition, Rajpal Sirohi
Fundamentals and Basic Optical Instruments, Daniel Malacara Hernández
Advanced Optical Instruments and Techniques, Daniel Malacara Hernández
Entropy and Information Optics: Connecting Information and Time, Second Edition,
Francis T.S. Yu
Handbook of Optical Engineering, Second Edition, Two Volume Set, Daniel Malacara Hernández
Optical Materials and Applications, Moriaki Wakaki
Photonic Signal Processing: Techniques and Applications, Le Nguyen Binh
Practical Applications of Microresonators in Optics and Photonics, edited by Andrey B. Matsko
Near-Earth Laser Communications, Second Edition, edited by Hamid Hemmati
Nonimaging Optics: Solar and Illumination System Methods, Design, and Performance, Roland
Winston, Lun Jiang, Vladimir Oliker
Smart CMOS Image Sensors and Applications, Jun Ohta
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.crcpress.com/Optical-Science-
and-Engineering/book-series/CRCOPTSCIENG
Smart CMOS Image
Sensors and Applications
Jun Ohta
Second edition published 2020
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
First edition published by CRC Press 2008
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and pub-
lisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced
in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not
been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so
we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information stor-
age or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.com
or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923,
978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact mpkbookspermissions@tandf.
co.uk
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-4987-6464-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-15625-5 (ebk)
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition ix
About the Author xiii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Ageneral overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 BriefhistoryofCMOSimage sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 CompetitionwithCCDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.2 Solid-state imagers with in-pixel amplifcation . . . . . . 4
1.2.3 PresentCMOSimage sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 BriefhistoryofsmartCMOSimage sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.1 Visionchips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.2 Advancement of CMOS technology and smart CMOS
imagesensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.3 Smart CMOS image sensors based on high performance
CMOSimage sensortechnologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Organizationofthebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Fundamentals of CMOS image sensors 11
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Fundamentalsofphoto-detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Absorptioncoeffcient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 Behaviorofminoritycarriers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.3 Sensitivity and quantum effciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 Photo-detectors for smart CMOS image sensors . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.1 pn-junctionphotodiode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.2 Photo-gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.3 Photo-transistor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.4 Avalanchephotodiode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.5 Photo-conductive detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4 AccumulationmodeinPDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.1 Potential change in accumulation mode . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4.2 Potentialdescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4.3 Behavior of photo-generated carriers in PD . . . . . . . . 32
2.5 Basicpixelstructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.5.1 Passive pixel sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
v
vi Contents
2.5.2 Active pixel sensor,3T-APS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5.3 Active pixelsensor,4T-APS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.6 Sensorperipherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.6.1 Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.6.2 Readoutcircuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.6.3 Analog-to-digital converters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.7 Basicsensorcharacteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.7.1 Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.7.2 Dynamicrange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.7.3 Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.8 Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.8.1 On-chipcolorfltertype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.8.2 Threeimagerstype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.8.3 Threelight sourcestype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.9 Comparison among pixel architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.10 ComparisonwithCCDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3 Smart structures and materials 61
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.2 Smartpixels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2.1 Analogmode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2.2 Pulsemodulationmode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.3 Digitalmode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.3 Smartmaterialsandstructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.3.1 Silicon-on-insulator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.3.2 ExtendingtoNIR region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.3.3 Backsideillumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3.4 3Dintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3.5 Smart structure for color detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.4 Dedicated pixel arrangement and optics for smart CMOS image
sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.4.1 Phase-difference detection auto focus . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.4.2 Hyperomnivision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.4.3 Biologicallyinspiredimagers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.4.4 Lightfeld camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.4.5 Polarimetricimaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.4.6 Lenslessimaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4 Smart imaging 107
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
4.2 Highsensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.2.1 Darkcurrentreduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.2.2 DifferentialAPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.2.3 Highconversiongainpixel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.2.4 SPAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Contents vii
4.2.5 Column-parallelprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.3 High-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.3.2 Globalshutter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.3.3 Column- and pixel-parallel processing for high speed
imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4.3.4 Ultra-high-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.4 Widedynamicrange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.4.2 Nonlinearresponse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.4.3 Linearresponse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.5 Demodulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.5.2 Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.5.3 Method of two accumulation regions . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.6 Three-dimensionalrangefnder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.6.2 Time-of-fight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.6.3 Triangulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5 Applications 145
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.2 Information and communication technology applications . . . . . 145
5.2.1 Optical wireless communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.2.2 OpticalIDtag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.3 Chemicalapplications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
5.3.1 Opticalactivityimaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
5.3.2 pHimaging sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.4 Bioscience and Biotechnology applications . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.4.1 Attachmenttype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
5.4.2 On-chiptype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
5.4.3 Implantationtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
5.5 Medicalapplications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
5.5.1 Capsuleendoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
5.5.2 Retinalprosthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Appendices 205
A Tables of constants 207
B Illuminance 209
C Human eye and CMOS image sensors 213
D Wavelength region in visible and infrared lights 217
viii Contents
E Fundamental characteristics of MOS capacitors 219
F Fundamental characteristics of MOSFET 221
G Optical format and resolution 225
H Intrinsic optical signal and in vivo window 227
References 229
Index 285
Preface to the Second Edition
This book is the 2nd edition of Smart CMOS Image Sensors and Applications
published in 2007. The purpose of coming out with this edition is essentially the
same as that of the 1st edition. Here, I reiterate the aim of this book, which was frst
stated in the preface of the 1st edition.
Smart CMOS Image Sensors and Applications focuses on smart
functions implemented in CMOS image sensors and their applications.
Some sensors have already been commercialized, whereas some have
only been proposed; the feld of smart CMOS image sensors is active
and generating new types of sensors. In this book I have endeavored
to gather references related to smart CMOS image sensors and their
applications; however, the feld is so vast that it is likely that some topics
are not described. Furthermore, the progress in the feld is so rapid that
some topics will develop as the book is being written. However, I believe
the essentials of smart CMOS image sensors are suffciently covered
and that this book is therefore useful for graduate school students and
engineers entering the feld.
It has been 12 years since the 1st edition of this book was published and
during these long years, the environment surrounding image sensors has changed
signifcantly. The smartphones, nowadays, are equipped with at least two cameras,
one on the front side and another on the rear side. The performance parameters
of smart phone cameras, such as the number of pixels, sensitivity, and speed, have
improved dramatically. Some of the smart functions introduced in the 1st edition
of this book have already been employed in commercial products. Based on these
changes, the frst edition has been revised to adapt the latest developments in smart
CMOS image sensors and their applications to the current technology. However,
there have been so many technological advances in this feld over the past 12 years
that it became more expedient to entirely rewrite some of the sections of the 1st
edition.
The organization of this book is almost the same as that of the 1st edition. Firstly,
Chapter 1 introduces MOS imagers and smart CMOS image sensors. Chapter 2
describes the basic elements of CMOS image sensors and details the relevant physics
behind these optoelectronic devices. Typical CMOS image sensor structures, such
as active pixel sensors (APS), are also introduced in this chapter. The subsequent
chapters (i.e., 3 , 4 and 5) form the crux of the book, and delve into smart CMOS
image sensors. Chapter 3 introduces several smart structures and materials for smart
CMOS image sensors. Using these structures and materials, Chapter 4 describes
ix