New Black Thinned CCD Offers a High Sensitivity from the UV to NIR Region

Hamamatsu Photonics introduces a new design of back-thinned linear CCD image sensor. The S11155-2048 and S11156-2048 utilise a resistive gate structure, with “on chip” electronic shutter function, offering high speed readout with low image lag. With their back-thinned structure these CCDs offer a high sensitivity (> 80 % quantum efficiency) from the UV to the NIR region of the spectrum.

The new, resistive gate structure allows for very high-speed signal transfer by using a single high-resistance electrode formed in the active area. A signal charge is transferred by means of a potential slope, created by applying different voltages across the electrode. Compared to a conventional CCD area image sensor, which can be used as a linear image sensor via line binning, a one dimensional CCD with a resistive gate structure offers greater signal transfer speed, and significantly reduced image lag (less than 0.1%), even if the pixel height is large.

The S11155-2048 has 2048 pixels, each 14µm by 500µm pixel height, whilst the S11156-2048 also with 2048 elements, offers a larger 1000µm pixel height. The resistive gate structure allows both sensors to operate with a high readout speed of 10 MHz.

These new image sensors are ideally suited for spectrophotometers requiring a long sensor, with short integration time or fast readout, and for various industrial inspection applications requiring high speed image acquisition.