A stacked CMOS-type active pixel sensor (SCAPS) for charged particles has been developed. The SCAPS is an integral-type detector that has several advantages over conventional systems, including two-dimensional detection, wide dynamic range, no insensitive time, direct detection of charged particles and a high degree of robustness. The output characteristics of the SCAPS for incident charged particles has been analysed both theoretically and experimentally. The relationships between the output voltage of the SCAPS and the number of incident charged particles were formulated by including corrections for the non-ideal characteristics of transistors in a pixel. The fluctuation of output characteristics of the SCAPS was evaluated experimentally by irradiation of secondary 4.5 keV Si + ions generated by SIMS. The function was used to determine the number of incident ions into each SCAPS pixel within twice the statistical error. The SCAPS is useful as a two-dimensional detector for microanalysis, such as stigmatic SIMS.
The noise characteristics of a stacked CMOS active pixel sensor (SCAPS) for incident charged particles have been analyzed under 4.5 keV Si + ion irradiation. The source of SCAPS dark current was found to change from thermal to electron leakage with decreasing device temperature. Leakage current at charge integration part in a pixel has been reduced to 0.1 electrons s À1 at 77 K. The incident ion signals are computed by subtracting reset frame values from each frame using a non-destructive readout operation. With increase of irradiated ions, the dominant noise source changed from read noise, and shot noise from the incident ions, to signal frame fixed-pattern noise from variations in sensitivity between pixels. Pixel read noise is equivalent to ten incident ions. The charge of an incident ion is converted to 1.5 electrons in the pixel capacitor. Shot noise corresponds to the statistical fluctuation of incident ions. Signal frame fixed-pattern noise is 0.7% of the signal. By comparing full well conditions to noise floor, a dynamic range of 80 dB is achieved. SCPAS is useful as a two-dimensional detector for microanalyses such as stigmatic secondary ion mass spectrometry. #
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