Radiation damage studies on a 5T sCMOS image sensor with integrated readout electronics

In this paper we present radiation studies performed on a low-noise, high-speed, large-area CMOS image sensor (CIS) based on the 0.18 μm CMOS process. The sensor has 2560(H) × 2160(V) pixels with a readout speed of 100 frames/sec and a readout noise of less than 2 e- rms. The sensor features 5T pinned photodiode pixels on a 6.5 um pitch. In order to measure the impact of radiation exposure on the sensor performance, the device was subjected to x-ray exposure of 50 kRads of incident radiation using a broad band 50 KVP x-ray source to assess Total Ionizing Dose (TID) sensitivity. The active area and the digital control block and amplification circuitry were separately irradiated to evaluate the damage to each. Dark data was captured as a function of radiation dose in order to measure dark current and offset changes in the signal.