Exposure Time Dependence of Dark Current in CCD Imagers

In this paper, we present a systematic study on the rate of dark current generation of two scientific charge-coupled device imagers. The dark current in both imagers was measured for exposure times from 5 to 7200 s at a constant temperature. As one would expect, the majority of pixels show a linear...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on electron devices 2010-03, Vol.57 (3), p.581-587
Main Authors: Widenhorn, R., Dunlap, J.C., Bodegom, E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Cameras
Charge coupled devices
Charge transfer devices
Charge-coupled devices (CCDs)
Counting
Dark current
Data mining
Devices
Electronics
Exact sciences and technology
exposure time nonlinearity
Imaging devices
impurities
Noise
Nonlinearity
Pixel
Pixels
Probability density function
Saturation
Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices
Time dependence
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Summary:In this paper, we present a systematic study on the rate of dark current generation of two scientific charge-coupled device imagers. The dark current in both imagers was measured for exposure times from 5 to 7200 s at a constant temperature. As one would expect, the majority of pixels show a linear increase in dark count with exposure time. However, we found distinct groups of pixels that show a nonlinear dark current dependence versus exposure time well below saturation. Since the dark count is often assumed to scale linearly with exposure time, these pixels can pose a problem during dark current correction. We also discuss what could cause some pixels to produce a dark count that is linear versus exposure time whereas others do not.
ISSN:0018-9383
1557-9646
DOI:10.1109/TED.2009.2038649