Frame interline transfer CCD sensor for HDTV camera

The authors describe the development of a HDTV (high-definition television) CCD (charge-coupled device) imager meeting the requirements for a practical color TV camera implemented with three CCD chips. They present a frame interline transfer CCD image sensor (FIT CCD), with 1258(H)*1035(V) pixels, that uses a poly-Si/Al double-layer transfer gate and p/sup +/-floating-island isolation. The saturation current of the present FIT CCD is 900 nA up to 625 kHz, whereas that of the conventional FIT CCD is fairly poor even at 300 kHz. The high transfer speed results from reduction of gate resistance. The photoconversion characteristics measured at a transfer frequency of 625 kHz show that the sensitivity reaches 50 nA/lx. The measured characteristics of the image sensor meet practical HDTV three-chip camera requirements.<<ETX>>