Effects of electron and gamma-ray irradiation on CMOS analog image sensors

Abstract

Changes in the average brightness and non-uniformity of dark output images, and quality of the pictures captured under natural lighting from the black and white (B & W) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) analog image sensors irradiated at different electron doses have been studied in comparison to those from the γ-ray irradiated sensors. For the electron-irradiated sensors, picture becomes blurry at 1.0 kGy, average brightness increases sharply and bright strips appear only at 0.6 kGy, non-uniformity increases obviously with an increasing dose and reaches maximum at 1.0 kGy. But for the γ-irradiated sensors, pictures and dark output images are nearly the same as that from the unirradiated CMOS image sensor up to 1.2 kGy, pictures become blurry above 1.8 kGy, and average brightness increases sharply above 1.4 kGy. Electron radiation damage is much more severe than γ-ray radiation damage for the CMOS image sensors. A possible explanation is presented. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.