Analysis of the noise properties of a solid-state SCAPS ion imager and development of software noise reduction

By analyzing the noise characteristics of a stacked CMOS-type active pixel sensor (SCAPS), we developed a noise reduction method. We also developed a multiple frame-averaging method based on a correlated double sampling (CDS) between averaged frames, which use the multiple frames collected by nondestructive readout of signals before and after ion irradiation. This method suppresses SCAPS read noise to 11 mu V, corresponding to 0.37 ions. Ion transfer and noise performance were evaluated by above method, leading to the confirmation of noise suppression below the level of single ion detection and the expansion of the dynamic range of SCAPS to 102 dB. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.