Charge-coupled device - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A charge-coupled device (CCD) is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by "shifting" the signals between stages within the device one at a time. CCDs move charge between capacitive bins in the device, with the shift allowing for the transfer of charge between bins.

The CCD is a major technology for digital imaging

Digital imaging

Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of digital images, typically from a physical scene. The term is often assumed to imply or include the processing, compression, storage, printing, and display of such images...

. In a CCD image sensor

Image sensor

An image sensor is a device that converts an optical image into an electronic signal. It is used mostly in digital cameras and other imaging devices...

, pixel

Pixel

In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....

s are represented by p-doped MOS capacitors. These capacitors are biased above the threshold for inversion when image acquisition begins, allowing to convert incoming photon

Photon

In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force...

s into electron charges at the semiconductor-oxide interface; the CCD is then used to read out these charges. Although CCDs are not the only technology to allow for light detection, CCD image sensors are widely used in professional, medical, and scientific applications where high-quality image data is required. In applications where a somewhat lower quality can be tolerated, such as web cams, cheaper active pixel sensor

Active pixel sensor

An active-pixel sensor is an image sensor consisting of an integrated circuit containing an array of pixel sensors, each pixel containing a photodetector and an active amplifier. There are many types of active pixel sensors including the CMOS APS used most commonly in cell phone cameras, web...

s are generally used.

History

The charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T

American Telephone & Telegraph

AT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

by Willard Boyle

Willard Boyle

Willard Sterling Boyle, was a Canadian physicist and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. On October 6, 2009, it was announced that he would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor".-Life:Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, he...

and George E. Smith

George E. Smith

George Elwood Smith is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor".Smith was born in White Plains, New York...

. The lab was working on semiconductor

Semiconductor

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...

bubble memory

Bubble memory

Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as bubbles or domains, each storing one bit of data...

when Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook, "Charge 'Bubble' Devices".
A description of how the device could be used as a shift register

Shift register

In digital circuits, a shift register is a cascade of flip flops, sharing the same clock, which has the output of any one but the last flip-flop connected to the "data" input of the next one in the chain, resulting in a circuit that shifts by one position the one-dimensional "bit array" stored in...

and as a linear and area imaging devices was described in this first entry. The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the bucket-brigade device (BBD), which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s.

The initial paper describing the concept listed possible uses as a memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on an oxidized silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds.

The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register. This device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel

Pixel

linear imaging device.
Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate. By 1971, Bell researchers Michael F. Tompsett et al. were able to capture images with simple linear devices.

Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor

Fairchild Semiconductor

Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. is an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957, it was a pioneer in transistor and integrated circuit manufacturing...

, RCA

RCA

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

and Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

, picked up on the invention and began development programs. Fairchild's effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio

Gil Amelio

Gilbert Frank Amelio is an American technology executive. He grew up in Miami, Florida and received a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology...

, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D 100 x 100 pixel device. The first KH-11 KENNAN

KH-11 Kennan

The KH-11 KENNAN, renamed CRYSTAL in 1982 and also referenced by the codenames 1010, and "Key Hole", is a type of reconnaissance satellite launched by the American National Reconnaissance Office since December 1976...

reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array technology for imaging was launched in December 1976. Under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

also started a big development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass produce CCDs for their camcorders. Before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982; subsequently, a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution.

In January 2006, Boyle and Smith were awarded the National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...

Charles Stark Draper Prize

The National Academy of Engineering annually awards the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering" - the others being the Academy's Russ...

, and in 2009 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, for their work on the CCD.

Basics of operation

In a CCD for capturing images, there is a photoactive region (an epitaxial

Epitaxy

Epitaxy refers to the deposition of a crystalline overlayer on a crystalline substrate, where the overlayer is in registry with the substrate. In other words, there must be one or more preferred orientations of the overlayer with respect to the substrate for this to be termed epitaxial growth. The...

layer of silicon), and a transmission region made out of a shift register (the CCD, properly speaking).

An image is projected through a lens

Lens (optics)

A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light, converging or diverging the beam. A simple lens consists of a single optical element...

onto the capacitor array (the photoactive region), causing each capacitor to accumulate an electric charge proportional to the light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

intensity at that location. A one-dimensional array, used in line-scan cameras, captures a single slice of the image, while a two-dimensional array, used in video and still cameras, captures a two-dimensional picture corresponding to the scene projected onto the focal plane of the sensor. Once the array has been exposed to the image, a control circuit causes each capacitor to transfer its contents to its neighbor (operating as a shift register). The last capacitor in the array dumps its charge into a charge amplifier

Charge amplifier

A charge amplifier is a current integrator driven by an electrical source with capacitive nature such as a piezoelectric sensor. Contrary to what its name may suggest, a charge amplifier does not amplify the electric charge present at its input...

, which converts the charge into a voltage

Voltage

Voltage, otherwise known as electrical potential difference or electric tension is the difference in electric potential between two points — or the difference in electric potential energy per unit charge between two points...

. By repeating this process, the controlling circuit converts the entire contents of the array in the semiconductor to a sequence of voltages. In a digital device, these voltages are then sampled, digitized, and usually stored in memory; in an analog device (such as an analog video camera), they are processed into a continuous analog signal (e.g. by feeding the output of the charge amplifier into a low-pass filter) which is then processed and fed out to other circuits for transmission, recording, or other processing.

Detailed physics of operation

The photoactive region of the CCD is, generally, an epitaxial layer of silicon

Silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

. It has a doping of p+ (Boron

Boron

Boron is the chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a metalloid. Because boron is not produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust. However, boron is concentrated on Earth by the...

) and is grown upon a substrate material, often p++. In buried channel devices, the type of design utilized in most modern CCDs, certain areas of the surface of the silicon are ion implanted

Ion implantation

Ion implantation is a materials engineering process by which ions of a material are accelerated in an electrical field and impacted into another solid. This process is used to change the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the solid...

with phosphorus

Phosphorus

Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...

, giving them an n-doped designation. This region defines the channel in which the photogenerated charge packets will travel. The gate oxide, i.e. the capacitor

Capacitor

A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electrical component used to store energy in an electric field. The forms of practical capacitors vary widely, but all contain at least two electrical conductors separated by a dielectric ; for example, one common construction consists of metal foils separated...

dielectric

Dielectric

A dielectric is an electrical insulator that can be polarized by an applied electric field. When a dielectric is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material, as in a conductor, but only slightly shift from their average equilibrium positions causing dielectric...

, is grown on top of the epitaxial layer and substrate.

Later on in the process polysilicon gates are deposited by chemical vapor deposition

Chemical vapor deposition

Chemical vapor deposition is a chemical process used to produce high-purity, high-performance solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. In a typical CVD process, the wafer is exposed to one or more volatile precursors, which react and/or...

, patterned with photolithography

Photolithography

Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...

, and etched in such a way that the separately phased gates lie perpendicular to the channels. The channels are further defined by utilization of the LOCOS

LOCOS

LOCOS, short for LOCal Oxidation of Silicon, is a microfabrication process where silicon dioxide is formed in selected areas on a silicon wafer having the Si-SiO2 interface at a lower point than the rest of the silicon surface....

process to produce the channel stop region.

Channel stops are thermally grown oxide

Oxide

An oxide is a chemical compound that contains at least one oxygen atom in its chemical formula. Metal oxides typically contain an anion of oxygen in the oxidation state of −2....

s that serve to isolate the charge packets in one column from those in another. These channel stops are produced before the polysilicon gates are, as the LOCOS process utilizes a high temperature step that would destroy the gate material. The channels stops are parallel to, and exclusive of, the channel, or "charge carrying", regions.

Channel stops often have a p+ doped region underlying them, providing a further barrier to the electrons in the charge packets (this discussion of the physics of CCD devices assumes an electron

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

transfer device, though hole transfer is possible).

The clocking of the gates, alternately high and low, will forward and reverse bias to the diode that is provided by the buried channel (n-doped) and the epitaxial layer (p-doped). This will cause the CCD to deplete, near the p-n junction

P-n junction

A p–n junction is formed at the boundary between a P-type and N-type semiconductor created in a single crystal of semiconductor by doping, for example by ion implantation, diffusion of dopants, or by epitaxy .If two separate pieces of material were used, this would...

and will collect and move the charge packets beneath the gates—and within the channels—of the device.

CCD manufacturing and operation can be optimized for different uses. The above process describes a frame transfer CCD. While CCDs may be manufactured on a heavily doped p++ wafer it is also possible to manufacture a device inside p-wells that have been placed on an n-wafer. This second method, reportedly, reduces smear, dark current

Dark current (physics)

In physics and in electronic engineering, dark current is the relatively small electric current that flows through photosensitive devices such as a photomultiplier tube, photodiode, or charge-coupled device even when no photons are entering the device. It is referred to as reverse bias leakage...

, and infrared

Infrared

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...

and red response. This method of manufacture is used in the construction of interline transfer devices.

Another version of CCD is called a peristaltic CCD. In a peristaltic charge-coupled device, the charge packet transfer operation is analogous to the peristaltic contraction and dilation of the digestive system. The peristaltic CCD has an additional implant that keeps the charge away from the silicon/silicon dioxide

Silicon dioxide

The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica , is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula '. It has been known for its hardness since antiquity...

interface and generates a large lateral electric field from one gate to the next. This provides an additional driving force to aid in transfer of the charge packets.

Architecture

The CCD image sensors can be implemented in several different architectures. The most common are full-frame, frame-transfer, and interline. The distinguishing characteristic of each of these architectures is their approach to the problem of shuttering.

In a full-frame device, all of the image area is active, and there is no electronic shutter. A mechanical shutter must be added to this type of sensor or the image smears as the device is clocked or read out.

With a frame-transfer CCD, half of the silicon area is covered by an opaque mask (typically aluminum). The image can be quickly transferred from the image area to the opaque area or storage region with acceptable smear of a few percent. That image can then be read out slowly from the storage region while a new image is integrating or exposing in the active area. Frame-transfer devices typically do not require a mechanical shutter and were a common architecture for early solid-state broadcast cameras. The downside to the frame-transfer architecture is that it requires twice the silicon real estate of an equivalent full-frame device; hence, it costs roughly twice as much.

The interline architecture extends this concept one step further and masks every other column of the image sensor for storage. In this device, only one pixel shift has to occur to transfer from image area to storage area; thus, shutter times can be less than a microsecond and smear is essentially eliminated. The advantage is not free, however, as the imaging area is now covered by opaque strips dropping the fill factor

Fill factor

Fill factor may refer to:*Fill factor , the ratio of maximum obtainable power to the product of the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current*In vision science, the ratio of view areas to the object visible areas....

to approximately 50 percent and the effective quantum efficiency

Quantum efficiency

Quantum efficiency is a quantity defined for a photosensitive device such as photographic film or a charge-coupled device as the percentage of photons hitting the photoreactive surface that will produce an electron–hole pair. It is an accurate measurement of the device's electrical sensitivity to...

by an equivalent amount. Modern designs have addressed this deleterious characteristic by adding microlenses on the surface of the device to direct light away from the opaque regions and on the active area. Microlenses can bring the fill factor back up to 90 percent or more depending on pixel size and the overall system's optical design.

The choice of architecture comes down to one of utility. If the application cannot tolerate an expensive, failure-prone, power-intensive mechanical shutter, an interline device is the right choice. Consumer snap-shot cameras have used interline devices. On the other hand, for those applications that require the best possible light collection and issues of money, power and time are less important, the full-frame device is the right choice. Astronomers tend to prefer full-frame devices. The frame-transfer falls in between and was a common choice before the fill-factor issue of interline devices was addressed. Today, frame-transfer is usually chosen when an interline architecture is not available, such as in a back-illuminated device.

CCDs containing grids of pixel

Pixel

s are used in digital camera

Digital camera

A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...

s, optical scanners

Image scanner

In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...

, and video cameras as light-sensing devices. They commonly respond to 70 percent of the incident light (meaning a quantum efficiency of about 70 percent) making them far more efficient than photographic film

Photographic film

Photographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film...

, which captures only about 2 percent of the incident light.

Most common types of CCDs are sensitive to near-infrared light, which allows infrared photography

Infrared photography

In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about...

, night-vision devices, and zero lux

Lux

The lux is the SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance, measuring luminous flux per unit area. It is used in photometry as a measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface...

(or near zero lux) video-recording/photography. For normal silicon-based detectors, the sensitivity is limited to 1.1 μm. One other consequence of their sensitivity to infrared is that infrared from remote control

Remote control

A remote control is a component of an electronics device, most commonly a television set, used for operating the television device wirelessly from a short line-of-sight distance.The remote control is usually contracted to remote...

s often appears on CCD-based digital cameras or camcorders if they do not have infrared blockers.

Cooling reduces the array's dark current

Dark current (physics)

, improving the sensitivity of the CCD to low light intensities, even for ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Professional observatories often cool their detectors with liquid nitrogen

Liquid nitrogen

Liquid nitrogen is nitrogen in a liquid state at a very low temperature. It is produced industrially by fractional distillation of liquid air. Liquid nitrogen is a colourless clear liquid with density of 0.807 g/mL at its boiling point and a dielectric constant of 1.4...

to reduce the dark current, and therefore the thermal noise, to negligible levels.

Use in astronomy

Due to the high quantum efficiencies of CCDs, linearity of their outputs (one count for one photon of light), ease of use compared to photographic plates, and a variety of other reasons, CCDs were very rapidly adopted by astronomers for nearly all UV-to-infrared applications.

Thermal noise and cosmic ray

Cosmic ray

Cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation...

s may alter the pixels in the CCD array. To counter such effects, astronomers take several exposures with the CCD shutter closed and opened. The average of images taken with the shutter closed is necessary to lower the random noise. Once developed, the dark frame average image is then subtracted

Dark frame subtraction

In digital photography, dark-frame subtraction is a way to minimize image noise for pictures taken with long exposure times. It takes advantage of the fact that a component of image noise, known as fixed-pattern noise, is the same from shot to shot: noise from the sensor, dead or hot pixels...

from the open-shutter image to remove the dark current and other systematic defects (dead pixels, hot pixels, etc.) in the CCD.

The Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...

, in particular, has a highly developed series of steps (“data reduction pipeline”) to convert the raw CCD data to useful images. See the references for a more in-depth description of the steps in astronomical CCD image-data correction and processing.

CCD cameras used in astrophotography

Astrophotography

Astrophotography is a specialized type of photography that entails recording images of astronomical objects and large areas of the night sky. The first photographs of an astronomical object were taken in the 1840s, but it was not until the late 19th century that advances in technology allowed for...

often require sturdy mounts to cope with vibrations from wind and other sources, along with the tremendous weight of most imaging platforms. To take long exposures of galaxies and nebulae, many astronomers use a technique known as auto-guiding

Autoguider

An autoguider is an electronic tool used in astrophotography to keep the celestial object being photographed from drifting across the field of view.-Background:When imaging dim targets, usually deep sky objects, hours-long exposure times are often necessary...

. Most autoguiders use a second CCD chip to monitor deviations during imaging. This chip can rapidly detect errors in tracking and command the mount motors to correct for them.

An interesting unusual astronomical application of CCDs, called drift-scanning, uses a CCD to make a fixed telescope behave like a tracking telescope and follow the motion of the sky. The charges in the CCD are transferred and read in a direction parallel to the motion of the sky, and at the same speed. In this way, the telescope can image a larger region of the sky than its normal field of view. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-filter imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project was named after the Alfred P...

is the most famous example of this, using the technique to produce the largest uniform survey of the sky yet accomplished.

In addition to astronomy, CCDs are also used in laboratory analytical instrumentation such as monochromators, spectrometer

Spectrometer

A spectrometer is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify materials. The variable measured is most often the light's intensity but could also, for instance, be the polarization...

s, and N-slit laser interferometers

N-Slit interferometer

The N-slit interferometer is an extension of the double-slit interferometer also known as Young's double-slit interferometer. One of the first known uses of N-slit arrays in optics was illustrated by Newton...

Color cameras

Digital color cameras generally use a Bayer mask

Bayer filter

A Bayer filter mosaic is a color filter array for arranging RGB color filters on a square grid of photosensors. Its particular arrangement of color filters is used in most single-chip digital image sensors used in digital cameras, camcorders, and scanners to create a color image...

over the CCD. Each square of four pixels has one filtered red, one blue, and two green (the human eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

is more sensitive to green than either red or blue). The result of this is that luminance

Luminance

Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle. The SI unit for luminance is candela per square...

information is collected at every pixel, but the color resolution is lower than the luminance resolution.

Better color separation can be reached by three-CCD devices (3CCD

3CCD

A three-CCD camera is a camera whose imaging system uses three separate charge-coupled devices , each one taking a separate measurement of the primary colors, red, green, or blue light. Light coming into the lens is split by a trichroic prism assembly, which directs the appropriate wavelength...

) and a dichroic beam splitter prism

Dichroic prism

A dichroic prism is a prism that splits light into two beams of differing wavelength . They are usually constructed of one or more glass prisms with dichroic optical coatings that selectively reflect or transmit light depending on the light's wavelength. That is, certain surfaces within the prism...

, that splits the image

Image

An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...

into red

Red

Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...

, green

Green

Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

and blue

Blue

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

components. Each of the three CCDs is arranged to respond to a particular color. Most professional video

Professional video camera

A professional video camera is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images...

camcorders, and some semi-professional camcorders, use this technique. Another advantage of 3CCD over a Bayer mask device is higher quantum efficiency

Quantum efficiency

(and therefore higher light sensitivity for a given aperture size). This is because in a 3CCD device most of the light entering the aperture is captured by a sensor, while a Bayer mask absorbs a high proportion (about 2/3) of the light falling on each CCD pixel.

For still scenes, for instance in microscopy, the resolution of a Bayer mask device can be enhanced by Microscanning

Microscanning

Microscanning is a method for increasing resolution of digital cameras. With the color co-site sampling identically colored pixels in several frames of the specimen, obtained by moving the sensor with a piezo mechanism in a regular raster, are combined to a sharp resulting image...

technology. During the process of color co-site sampling, several frames of the scene are produced. Between acquisitions, the sensor is moved in pixel dimensions, so that each point in the visual field is acquired consecutively by elements of the mask that are sensitive to the red, green and blue components of its color. Eventually every pixel in the image has been scanned at least once in each color and the resolution of the three channels become equivalent (the resolutions of red and blue channels are quadrupled while the green channel is doubled).

Sensor sizes

Sensors (CCD / CMOS) are often referred to with an inch fraction designation such as 1/1.8" or 2/3" called the optical format

Optical format

Optical format is a measure of the maximum diagonal size of an imaged object in the focal plane of an optical system. The diagonal size of the imaging sensor and the optical format of the lens system must be matched....

. This measurement actually originates back in the 1950s and the time of Vidicon tubes

Video camera tube

In older video cameras, before the mid to late 1980s, a video camera tube or pickup tube was used instead of a charge-coupled device for converting an optical image into an electrical signal. Several types were in use from the 1930s to the 1980s...

. Compact digital cameras and Digicams typically have much smaller sensors than a digital SLR and are thus less sensitive to light and inherently more prone to noise. Some examples of the CCDs found in modern cameras can be found in this table in a Digital Photography Review article

Type	Aspect Ratio	Width mm	Height mm	Diagonal mm	Area mm²	Relative Area
1/6"	4:3	2.300	1.730	2.878	3.979	1.000
1/4"	4:3	3.200	2.400	4.000	7.680	1.930
1/3.6"	4:3	4.000	3.000	5.000	12.000	3.016
1/3.2"	4:3	4.536	3.416	5.678	15.495	3.894
1/3"	4:3	4.800	3.600	6.000	17.280	4.343
1/2.7"	4:3	5.270	3.960	6.592	20.869	5.245
1/2"	4:3	6.400	4.800	8.000	30.720	7.721
1/1.8"	4:3	7.176	5.319	8.932	38.169	9.593
2/3"	4:3	8.800	6.600	11.000	58.080	14.597
1"	4:3	12.800	9.600	16.000	122.880	30.882
4/3"	4:3	18.000	13.500	22.500	243.000	61.070
Other image sizes as a comparison
APS-C	3:2	25.100	16.700	30.148	419.170	105.346
35mm	3:2	36.000	24.000	43.267	864.000	217.140
645	4:3	56.000	41.500	69.701	2324.000	584.066

Electron-multiplying CCD

An electron-multiplying CCD (EMCCD, also known as an L3Vision CCD, L3CCD or Impactron CCD) is a charge-coupled device in which a gain register is placed between the shift register and the output amplifier. The gain register is split up into a large number of stages. In each stage the electrons are multiplied by impact ionization

Impact ionization

Impact ionization is the process in a material by which one energetic charge carrier can lose energy by the creation of other charge carriers...

in a similar way to an avalanche diode

Avalanche diode

In electronics, an avalanche diode is a diode that is designed to go through avalanche breakdown at a specified reverse bias voltage. The junction of an avalanche diode is designed to prevent current concentration at hot spots, so that the diode is undamaged by the breakdown...

. The gain probability at every stage of the register is small (P < 2%) but as the number of elements is large (N > 500), the overall gain can be very high (

), with single input electrons giving many thousands of output electrons. Reading a signal from a CCD gives a noise background, typically a few electrons. In an EMCCD this noise is superimposed on many thousands of electrons rather than a single electron; the devices thus have negligible readout noise.

EMCCDs show a similar sensitivity to Intensified CCDs (ICCDs). However, as with ICCDs, the gain that is applied in the gain register is stochastic and the exact gain that has been applied to a pixel's charge is impossible to know. At high gains (> 30), this uncertainty has the same effect on the signal-to-noise ratio

Signal-to-noise ratio

Signal-to-noise ratio is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise...

(SNR) as halving the quantum efficiency

Quantum efficiency

with respect to operation with a gain of unity. However, at very low light levels (where the quantum efficiency is most important) it can be assumed that a pixel either contains an electron - or not. This removes the noise associated with the stochastic multiplication at the cost of counting multiple electrons in the same pixel as a single electron. The dispersion in the gain is shown in the graph on the right. For multiplication registers with many elements and large gains it is well modelled by the equation:

where P is the probability of getting n output electrons given m input electrons and a total mean multiplication register gain of g.

Because of the lower costs and the somewhat better resolution EMCCDs are capable of replacing ICCDs in many applications. ICCDs still have the advantage that they can be gated very fast and thus are useful in applications like range-gated imaging. EMCCD cameras indispensably need a cooling system to cool the chip down to temperatures around 170 K

Kelvin

The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...

. This cooling system unfortunately adds additional costs to the EMCCD imaging system and often yields heavy condensation problems in the application.

The low-light capabilities of L3CCDs are starting to find use in astronomy. In particular their low noise at high readout speeds makes them very useful for lucky imaging

Lucky imaging

Lucky imaging is one form of speckle imaging used for astronomical photography. Speckle imaging techniques use a high-speed camera with exposure times short enough so that the changes in the Earth's atmosphere during the exposure are minimal.With lucky imaging, those optimum exposures least...

of faint stars, and high speed photon counting photometry.

Commercial EMCCD cameras typically have clock-induced charge and dark current (dependent on the extent of cooling) that leads to an effective readout noise ranging from 0.01 to 1 electrons per pixel read. Custom-built deep-cooled non-inverting mode EMCCD cameras have provided effective readout noise lower than 0.1 electrons per pixel read http://www.ing.iac.es/~smt/LLLCCD/L3Poster.pdf for lucky imaging

Lucky imaging

observations.

Frame transfer CCD

A frame transfer CCD is a specialized CCD, often used in astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

and some professional video camera

Professional video camera

A professional video camera is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images...

s, designed for high exposure efficiency and correctness.

The normal functioning of a CCD, astronomical or otherwise, can be divided into two phases: exposure and readout. During the first phase, the CCD passively collects incoming photon

Photon

s, storing electron

Electron

s in its cells. After the exposure time is passed, the cells are read out one line at a time. During the readout phase, cells are shifted down the entire area of the CCD. While they are shifted, they continue to collect light. Thus, if the shifting is not fast enough, errors can result from light that falls on a cell holding charge during the transfer. These errors are referred to as "vertical smear" and cause a strong light source to create a vertical line above and below its exact location. In addition, the CCD cannot be used to collect light while it is being read out. Unfortunately, a faster shifting requires a faster readout, and a faster readout can introduce errors in the cell charge measurement, leading to a higher noise level.

A frame transfer CCD solves both problems: it has a shielded, not light sensitive, area containing as many cells as the area exposed to light. Typically, this area is covered by a reflective material such as aluminium. When the exposure time is up, the cells are transferred very rapidly to the hidden area. Here, safe from any incoming light, cells can be read out at any speed one deems necessary to correctly measure the cells' charge. At the same time, the exposed part of the CCD is collecting light again, so no delay occurs between successive exposures.

The disadvantage of such a CCD is the higher cost: the cell area is basically doubled, and more complex control electronics are needed.

Intensified charge-coupled device

An intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) is a CCD that is optically connected to an image intensifier that is mounted in front of the CCD.

An image intensifier includes three functional elements: a photocathode

Photocathode

A photocathode is a negatively charged electrode in a light detection device such as a photomultiplier or phototube that is coated with a photosensitive compound...

, a micro-channel plate (MCP) and a phosphor

Phosphor

A phosphor, most generally, is a substance that exhibits the phenomenon of luminescence. Somewhat confusingly, this includes both phosphorescent materials, which show a slow decay in brightness , and fluorescent materials, where the emission decay takes place over tens of nanoseconds...

screen. These three elements are mounted one close behind the other in the mentioned sequence. The photons which are coming from the light source fall onto the photocathode, thereby generating photoelectrons. The photoelectrons are accelerated towards the MCP by an electrical control voltage, applied between photocathode and MCP. The electrons are multiplied inside of the MCP and thereafter accelerated towards the phosphor screen. The phosphor screen finally converts the multiplied electrons back to photons which are guided to the CCD by a fiber optic or a lens.

An image intensifier inherently includes a shutter

Shutter (photography)

In photography, a shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time, for the purpose of exposing photographic film or a light-sensitive electronic sensor to light to capture a permanent image of a scene...

functionality: If the control voltage between the photocathode and the MCP is reversed, the emitted photoelectrons are not accelerated towards the MCP but return to the photocathode. Thus, no electrons are multiplied and emitted by the MCP, no electrons are going to the phosphor screen and no light is emitted from the image intensifier. In this case no light falls onto the CCD, which means that the shutter is closed. The process of reversing the control voltage at the photocathode is called gating

Gating

-Neurobiology:*Gating , the opening or closing of ion channels*Sensory gating, an automatic process by which the brain adjusts to stimuli*Synaptic gating, neural circuits suppressing inputs through synapses...

and therefore ICCDs are also called gateable CCD cameras.

Besides the extremely high sensitivity of ICCD cameras, which enable single photon detection, the gateability is one of the major advantages of the ICCD over the EMCCD cameras. The highest performing ICCD cameras enable shutter times as short as 200 picosecond

Picosecond

A picosecond is 10−12 of a second. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 001 seconds. A picosecond is to one second as one second is to 31,700 years....

s.

ICCD cameras are in general somewhat higher in price than EMCCD cameras because they need the expensive image intensifier. On the other hand EMCCD cameras need a cooling system to cool the EMCCD chip down to temperatures around 170 K

Kelvin

. This cooling system adds additional costs to the EMCCD camera and often yields heavy condensation problems in the application.

ICCDs are used in night vision devices and in a large variety of scientific applications.

External links

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