Evaluation of a backside-illuminated ISIS

This paper presents preliminary evaluation results of a test sensor of the backside-illuminated ISIS, an ultra-high sensitivity and ultra-high speed CCD image sensor. To achieve ultra-high sensitivity, the CCD image sensor employs the following three technologies: backside illumination, cooling and Charge Carrier Multiplication (CCM). The test sensor has been designed, fabricated and evaluated. At room temperature without cooling, the video camera has about ten-time higher sensitivity than the previous one, which was supported by a conventional front side illumination technology. Furthermore, the video camera can detect images at very low signal level, less than 5 e-, by using CCM at -40 degree C.