High-performance CMOS buffered gate modulation input (BGMI) readout circuits for IR FPA

Abstract

A new CMOS current readout structure for the infrared (IR) focal-plane-array (FPA), called the buffered gate modulation input (BGMI) circuit, is proposed in this paper. Using the technique of unbalanced current mirror, the new BGMI circuit can achieve high charge sensitivity with adaptive current gain control and good immunity from threshold-voltage variations. Moreover, the readout dynamic range can be significantly increased by using the threshold-voltage-independent current-mode background suppression technique. To further improve the readout performance, switch current integration techniques, shared-buffer biasing technique, and dynamic charging output stage with the correlated double sampling circuit are also incorporated into the BGMI circuit, An experimental 128 x 128 BGMI readout chip has been designed and fabricated in 0.8 mu m double-poly-double-metal (DPDM) n-well CMOS technology, The measurement results of the fabricated readout chip under 77K and 5 V supply voltage have successfully verified both readout function and performance improvement. The fabricated chip has the maximum charge capacity of 9.5 x 10(7) electrons, the transimpedance of 2.5 x 10(9) Omega at 10 nA background current, and the active power dissipation of 40 mW, The uniformity of background suppression currents can be as high as 99%. Thus, high injection efficiency, high charge sensitivity, large dynamic range, large storage capacity, and low noise can be achieved in the BGMI circuit with the pixel size of 50 x 50 mu m(2), These advantageous characteristics make the BGMI circuit suitable for various IR FPA readout applications with a wide range of background currents.