Charge Transfer Inefficiency in Pinned Photodiode CMOS image sensors: Simple Montecarlo modeling and experimental measurement based on a pulsed storage-gate method

The charge transfer time represents the bottleneck in terms of temporal resolution in Pinned Photodiode (PPD) CMOS image sensors. This work focuses on the modeling and estimation of this key parameter. A simple numerical model of charge transfer in PPDs is presented. The model is based on a Montecarlo simulation and takes into account both charge diffusion in the PPD and the effect of potential obstacles along the charge transfer path. This work also presents a new experimental approach for the estimation of the charge transfer time, called pulsed Storage Gate (SG) method. This method, which allows reproduction of a “worst-case” transfer condition, is based on dedicated SG pixel structures and is particularly suitable to compare transfer efficiency performances for different pixel geometries.