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Design of Pixellated CMOS Photon Detector for Secondary Electron Detection in the Scanning Electron Microscope


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Authors

Chuah, Joon Huang 
Holburn, David 

Abstract

jats:pThis paper presents a novel method of detecting secondary electrons generated in the scanning electron microscope (SEM). The method suggests that the photomultiplier tube (PMT), traditionally used in the Everhart-Thornley (ET) detector, is to be replaced with a configurable multipixel solid-state photon detector offering the advantages of smaller dimension, lower supply voltage and power requirements, and potentially cheaper product cost. The design of the proposed detector has been implemented using a standard 0.35 jats:italicμ</jats:italic>m CMOS technology with optical enhancement. This microchip comprises main circuit constituents of an array of photodiodes connecting to respective noise-optimised transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), a selector-combiner (SC) circuit, and a postamplifier (PA). The design possesses the capability of detecting photons with low input optical power in the range of 1 nW with 100 jats:italicμ</jats:italic>m × 100 jats:italicμ</jats:italic>m sized photodiodes and achieves a total amplification of 180 dBΩ at the output.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

40 Engineering, 4009 Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

Advances in OptoElectronics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1687-563X
1687-5648

Volume Title

Publisher

Hindawi Limited