10×10-pixel 606kS/s multi-point fluorescence correlation spectroscopy CMOS image sensor

To observe molecular transport in a living cell, a high-speed CMOS image sensor for multi-point fluorescence correlation spectroscopy is developed. To achieve low-noise and high-speed simultaneously, a prototype CMOS image sensor is designed based on a complete pixel-parallel architecture and multi-channel pipelined pixel readout. The prototype chip with 10×10 effective pixels is fabricated in 0.18-μm CMOS image sensor technology. The pixel pitch and the photosensitive area are 56μm and 10μm in diameter without a microlens, respectively. In the experiment, the total sampling rate of 606kS/s is achieved. The measured average random noise is 24.9LSB, which is equivalent to about 2.5 electrons in average.