"Construction And Performance Of A 320 X 244-Element IR-CCD Imager With PtSi Schottky-Barrier Detectors

A 320 x 244-element IR-CCD imager was developed with 40μm x 40-μm pixels, 43% fill factor, and a saturation signal of 1.4 x 106 electrons/pixel. Charge-transfer inefficiency of less than 10-4 per transfer was achieved for operation of the imager at 77K with horizontal clock frequency of 6.2 MHz using a 12-μm-wide horizontal output register with a 3-μm-wide trench. The device was operated at temperatures as low as 50K with sufficiently low transfer losses to produce good quality video images. Excellent quality thermal imaging was demonstrated for operation of the 320 x 244 imager at 30 frames/s with 100 mm f/1.4 lens, an f/1.3 cold shield, and 3.4-μm long-pass filter at 77K.