Effects of Hot Pixels on Pixel Performance on Backside Illuminated Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Image Sensors

Effects of hot pixels on pixel performance in light and dark environments have been investigated in pinned photodiode 0.18 μm backside illuminated CMOS image sensors irradiated by 10 MeV protons. After exposure to protons, hot pixels and normal pixels are selected from the whole pixel array, and their influences on key parameters are analyzed. Experimental results show that radiation-induced hot pixels have a significant impact on pixel performance in dark environments, such as dark signal nonuniformity, long integration time, and random telegraph signal. Hot pixels are caused by defects with complex structures, i.e., cluster defects. Furthermore, the dark current activation energy result confirms that the defects causing the hot pixels have defect energy levels close to mid-gap.