Controlled charge extraction—antiblooming capabilities in pnCCD imaging sensors

Abstract

Blooming in a CCD occurs when the signal charges accumulating in a pixel exceed the pixel saturation level and spill over into adjacent pixels. They start to spill over the weakest threshold in the electric potential of the pixel structure resulting in a degradation of the spatial information. With antiblooming mechanisms, the spatial resolution of the incoming photons can be preserved, but the intensity information is lost in the overflowing pixels. For imaging experiments, relying on a precise image structure, the preservation of the spatial resolution at the expense of precise intensity information is a workable compromise. In contrast to insulated gate CCDs, notably MOSCCDs, the potential wells of the pixel array of a pnCCD are created by p+n junctions, allowing direct electric access to the pixel structure. This allows to directly drain off charges from the pixels and to define a drain level by applying the appropriate operation voltages. Charge packets from 1 000 to more than one billion signal electrons per readout frame were generated without observing a spillover into adjacent pixels. As soon as the saturation level of the pixel is reached, the excess charge carriers are removed through charge drains exclusively created with the modification of the electric potential of the pnCCD by the operation voltages. No additional antiblooming structures were implemented in the device and the pixel full well capacity of approximately 300 000 electrons in standard operation mode was preserved. A physical model of the antiblooming mechanism of pnCCDs with a pixel size of 75 μ m × 75 μ m was established by two-dimensional numerical device simulations and verified by experiments.