Optical Technique for Increasing Fill Factor of Mosaic Arrays

摘要

Focal plane staring arrays consisting of Schottky barrier infrared detectors and infrared charge coupled devices (IRCCD) are currently under development for use in several remote sensing applications. These IRCCD arrays use monolithic silicon construction for sensing image irradiance in the optical field-of-view. The radiant intensity at each Schottky platinum-silicide (Pt-Si) detector is converted to an electronic charge that is integrated and read out by the charge coupled device (CCD) in the adjacent row. Although this type of image sensor has high response uniformity, large dynamic range, and excellent survivability characteristics, the elemental quantum efficiency and sensing area density are lower than is realizable from other staring mosaics. This report describes a novel optical technique that significantly improves the responsivity of Schottky IRCCD arrays by increasing the sensitive-area fill factor.