sCMOS Structure and Operation

sCMOS technology has been developed specifically to overcome many of the limitations that have marred other scientific detector technologies, resulting in an imaging detector that provides exceptional performance for many applications.

As illustrated above, the CMOS sensor is an “Active Pixel Sensor” (APS) whereby each pixel has its own integral amplifier and the sequence of operation is as follows:

Light hits sensor and generates charge (electrons).
The photo-generated charge is converted to an analog voltage inside each pixel amplifier
Pixel voltage is transferred to the column bus via a row select signal
The analog voltage is then converted to a digital signal via columns of A/D (analog to digital) converters.
The final digitized signals are then read out sequentially at a pixel readout speed of up to 280 MHz for the ZL41 Cell 5.5 and 270 MHz for the ZL41 Cell 4.2 (in x2 halves).

Notes
The diagram, above is representative - the light sensitive area is contiguous as the photodiodes for each pixel are buried within the sensor. Each pixel also has a microlens to maximize sensitivity to light. For Rolling Shutter mode operation, pixels in each row are exposed and the charge converted to a voltage simultaneously before being digitized then read out sequentially. For Global Shutter mode, each pixel in the sensor begins an exposure simultaneously and then ends this exposure simultaneously.

Notes

The diagram, above is representative - the light sensitive area is contiguous as the photodiodes for each pixel are buried within the sensor. Each pixel also has a microlens to maximize sensitivity to light.

For Rolling Shutter mode operation, pixels in each row are exposed and the charge converted to a voltage simultaneously before being digitized then read out sequentially.

For Global Shutter mode, each pixel in the sensor begins an exposure simultaneously and then ends this exposure simultaneously.