352

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 50, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2003

UV-Responsive CCD Image Sensors With Enhanced

Inorganic Phosphor Coatings
Wendy A. R. Franks, Martin J. Kiik, Member, IEEE, and Arokia Nathan, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractTypical polysilicon gate charge-coupled device (CCD)

image sensors are unresponsive to ultraviolet (UV) light because of
the high absorption of the radiation in polysilcon gate material,
which leads to a short penetration depth ( 2 nm), and absorption of the radiation in the gate material rather than within the
channel of the CCD. An inorganic phosphor coating to convert the
UV radiation to visible has been developed. Although the coating
is similar to acrylics doped with organic laser dyes reported previously [1][4], in this work the organic dye has been replaced with
a more robust inorganic phosphor. In addition, a new deposition
method has been developed to improve the photoresponse nonuniformity (PRNU) of the coated sensor. The inorganic phosphor has
been selected over organic laser dyes because organic molecules
degrade rapidly upon exposure to UV radiation, with exponential
degradation rates as high as 3% per hour at an illumination level of
1 W/cm2 . Inorganic phosphors exhibit reduced degradation with
90% of the degradation occurring within the first 2% of the materials lifetime. It is this stabilization that improves the viability
of phosphor-coated CCD image sensors for commercial applications. The quantum efficiency observed was 12% at 265 nm. The
improved deposition technique reduced the photoresponse nonuniformity degradation fourfold, so the observed PRNU was only 0.4
times greater than that of the uncoated sensor.
Index TermsInorganic phosphor, phosphor coating, UV-enhanced charge couple devices (CCDs).

I. INTRODUCTION

INCE charge coupled devices (CCDs) and digital image

cameras were first integrated into manufacturing applications, researchers have been investigating designs to improve
their poor ultraviolet (UV) responsivity. The low responsivity is
because of the small penetration depth of UV in silicon. Most of
the radiation is absorbed in the polysilicon gate region and very
little penetrates into the buried channel region of the sensor to
generate a photoelectric signal. Two different approaches to improve this limitation are: structural modifications to the CCD
and postprocessing deposited phosphor coatings. Structural designs such as back-side thinned devices, pinned photodiodes
and ITO gated CCD sensors [5][7] exhibit good characteristics but require complicated fabrication processes that may be
expensive to manufacture. Organic phosphor coatings to convert
Manuscript received August 23, 2002; revised November 15, 2002. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor J. Hynecek.
W. A. R. Franks was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada. She is now
with the Physical Electronics Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
CH-8093 Zrich, Switzerland.
M. J. Kiik is with DALSA Corporation, Waterloo, ON N2V 2E9 Canada
(e-mail: martin.kiik@dalsa.com).
A. Nathan is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1 Canada.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TED.2003.809029

UV into visible radiation have been developed as a simpler, yet

effective solution. For example, Photometrics Ltd. has developed Metachrome II, a sputter-deposited coating based on the
organic coronene molecule [8][10]. Another coating approach
involves organic laser dye doped plastics [1][4]. While organic
coatings exhibit good initial responsivities, they photodegrade
to zero efficiency exponentially. For example, the organic laser
dye PPO degrades by 3% every hour under 1- W/cm radiation [1]. In addition to efficiency considerations, image quality
must be preserved. Since the organic coatings are typically fairly
thin ( 10 m ), the modulation transfer function (a measure
of the amount of light that incorrectly enters adjacent pixels
resulting in blurred images) and photoresponse nonuniformity
(PRNU) degradation is typically low. Photometrics reports that
the PRNU of the coated sensor increases by 200%300% [11].
The coatings presented in this work are similar to the organic
laser dye doped plastics. However, here the organic dye is
replaced by an inorganic phosphor. Inorganic phosphors have
been used for over a century as a light-conversion material
in fluorescent light tubes [12]. These materials are inherently
designed for long lifetime, high-intensity applications. Several
different phosphors were selected for initial testing. They
were deposited onto fused silica slides with an eye-dropper
[13].(as a proof-of-concept experiment), using conventional
spin-coaters, or with a new settle-coating deposition technique.
The best results reported here used a commercial phosphor
(La,Ce,Tb)PO : Ce : Tb deposited in a two-layer coating with
a second pure acrylic plastic layer deposited over the phosphor.
The quantum efficiency of the coated sensor is 12% at an
illumination wavelength of 265 nm with a PRNU that is 1.6
times greater than the uncoated sensor. To reduce PRNU degradation, the new settle deposition technique showed a reduction
in PRNU degradation by up to a factor of 4.4, compared to
conventional spin-coating techniques.
II. CRITICAL PARAMETERS
The phosphor must be selected so that it is effective as a light
converter without compromising CCD operation. The key material parameters considered include photostability, conversion
efficiency, decay time, absorption and emission peak, particle
size and distribution, and film morphology. The importance of
these parameters is described below. In terms of photostability,
in most cases vendors cannot supply the needed information
regarding the phosphor photostability. However, one can predict this by examining its stability in other applications. For example, inorganic phosphors are typically used to coat fluorescent tubes where the rated lifetime can be as long as 55 000 h

0018-9383/03$17.00 2003 IEEE

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353

TABLE I
COMMERCIAL PHOSPHORS SELECTED FOR CONVERSION EFFICIENCY TESTING

* Phosphor Technology, Ltd., U.K.

 Phosphor Technology has a product JL 49 that is supposed to be the fastest phosphor in the world. It met all the compliance criteria but was
too expensive to be selected for testing.
United Mineral and Chemical Corporation, Lyndhurst, NJ USA.
Osram Sylvania, Ltd., Towanda, PA USA.

of operation [12]. While inorganic phosphors do exhibit some

photodegradation, this generally occurs within the first 100 h of
operation when the coating stabilizes [12].
The selected phosphor should have a conversion efficiency
as close to 100% as possible. This is of particular importance
because the luminescence mechanism is isotropic and 50% of
the fluorescence is emitted away from the sensor. A fraction of
this fluorescence will experience total internal reflection at the
filmair interface and will be directed back toward the sensor.
This fraction will improve the conversion efficiency, however,
it also contributes to resolution degradation since the reflected
light may be directed to neighboring pixels. It is essential that
the decay time is shorter than the sensor integration time so
that all of the fluorescing photons have been emitted before
the associated charge packet is cleared from the pixel; otherwise image smear will be observed. The phosphor should be
selected so that its absorption peak matches the application illumination wavelength. The emission peak should be selected
to match the peak responsivity wavelength of the CCD to maximize overall sensor quantum efficiency. The phosphor particle
size must be small enough to accommodate the desired coating
thickness; they should have a diameter that is smaller than the

required coating thickness. The phosphor crystal edges should

be smooth rather than jagged to reduce losses. Particle-size variations should be minimized to ensure coating uniformity. The
presence of crystals larger than the coating thickness will result
in gross nonuniformities and an increase in PRNU.
A coating efficiency figure of merit has been adapted from
[1]. Light incident on the phosphor coating will either be rescattered by the phosphor crystals
or absorbed
flected
. Light that is absorbed will be reemitted at a longer wavelength according to the phosphor internal conversion efficiency
. The figure of merit
simplifies the absorption
and emission spectrum to a single wavelength, and is defined as
follows:

(1)
is the fraction of light lost due to scattering,
where
is the fraction of light reflected,
is the fraction reflected
is the fraction absorbed by
at the filmsensor interface,
the phosphor, is the incident wavelength, and is the emitted
wavelength. The fraction of light emitted back toward the light

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 50, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2003

source (the radiation that is not captured by total internal reflecis defined as
tion)
(2)

is the index of refraction of the film . Under the

where
, CE
100%,
1.0, and
ideal case when
is 1.5 (when the plastic film is ethyl methacrylate), then
is
is 0,
is 0.125 ,and the figure of merit
gives an
0.04,
efficiency of 84%.
Based on the critical material parameters, several materials
were selected for testing (see Table I) [11]. To date, the most
promising phosphor tested is (La,Ce,Tb)PO : Ce : Tb, which
has commercial name 2212 from Osram Sylvania [14]. This
phosphor is listed as a lamp phosphor. It has a theoretical conversion efficiency of 86% at 254 nm, a peak excitation wavelength of 254 nm, and a peak emission wavelength of 546 nm.
Neither the decay time nor the particle size were specified by
the vendor.

Fig. 1. Topographical measurement of coating 2212-2 ((La,Ce,Tb)PO :

Ce : Tb) deposited on a fused silica slide.

III. COATING COMPOSITION AND DEPOSITION

The deposition of an inorganic phosphor is not trivial since
the fluorescence mechanism is a function of the crystal structure
that cannot be disturbed [12]. Depositions involving dissolution
or bond disruption (for example, sputtering) are therefore precluded. Our deposition technique involves suspending the phosphor in a dissolved acrylic solution and directly applying the
suspension to the sensor using a proof-of-concept experiment,
with an eyedropper, or more reproducibly with a spin-coater.
This method of applying the phosphor is similar to the technique first proposed by Viehmann [1], who incorporated laser
dyes in a plastic coating.
The coating consists of three components: the acrylic
matrix, the phosphor, and an organic solvent. Three different
acrylic resins were investigated: methyl methacrylate, ethyl
methacrylate, and butyl methacrylate. In-house tests revealed
that the ethyl methacrylate had the highest transmission at
255 nm; optical power absorbed was 2%, 8%, and 13% for ethyl
methacrylate, methyl methacrylate and butyl methacrylate,
respectively. Reagent grade toluene was selected to dissolve the
acrylic although any organic solvent would suffice. Coatings
were deposited onto nonluminescing fused silica slides and
onto DALSA IA-D1-0256 area array CCD sensors [15].
It was established early in the project that coatings with a
high phosphor concentration produced results with the best efficiency. This was expected since there must be sufficient phosphor present to convert incident illumination. In addition, when
the plastic content is too low the efficiency dropped sharply. It
is postulated that this low conversion efficiency is due to scattering losses caused by the roughness of the coating. Fig. 1
shows a topographical measurement from a coating containing
20 mg/ml of acrylic; this coating is clearly nonuniform. In an
attempt to smooth the coating surface, a two-layer coating was
developed in which the phosphor suspension layer was covered
with a second layer containing only plastic. Fig. 2(a) and (b)

Fig. 2. SEM micrograph of a cross-section of the (a) two-layer phosphor

coating and (b) pure phosphor crystals. The arrow in (a) points to a region
where it is obvious that the plastic has smoothed over the phosphor crystals.

are SEM photographs showing cross sections of the two-layer

2212-2 phosphor coating and pure phosphor crystals, respectively. From a comparison of the two photographs, it can be
seen that the second layer of plastic coating helps smooth the
phosphor crystal surfaces. In total, three coatings were tested:
2212-1 containing no plastic, 2212-2 containing 20 mg/ml of
plastic and the two-layer 2212-2 coating described above. The
composition of the two different phosphor coatings and the pure
plastic coating is listed in Table II.

FRANKS et al.: UV-RESPONSIVE CCD IMAGE SENSORS

COMPOSITION

OF THE

355

TABLE II
TWO DIFFERENT PHOSPHOR COATINGS TESTED AND THE PURE PLASTIC COATING THAT WAS USED
ALONG WITH COATING 2212-2 TO MAKE A THIRD COATING

Fig. 3. Block diagram of the conversion efficiency experimental setup.

A new settle deposition method was also developed in an attempt to improve coating uniformity, which directly impacts the
PRNU and image resolution. The suspension is formed as described in above; however, instead of immediately applying it to
the substrate the suspension was allowed to settle. This is effectively a simple method of filtering the crystal that has a size distribution of 1 to 8 m with an average particle size of 3.6 1.7
m. The solution is then transferred to another container containing the substrate and allowed to evaporate, leaving behind
the uniform coating. It was not necessary to add a subsequent
layer of plastic, as described above, since a layer of plastic settled on top of the phosphor.
IV. CONVERSION AND QUANTUM EFFICIENCIES
In this work, the conversion efficiency is retrieved from measurements of the luminescing efficiency of a coated fused-silica
slide, while the quantum efficiency involves measurements with
a coated CCD sensor. To measure the conversion efficiency,
the experimental setup given in Fig. 3 was used. The UV light
source is an Oriel 200 W Hg bulb. The light was first collimated and then passed through a liquid IR filter. Interference
filters were used to create a narrow-band spectrum made up of
0
atomic mercury lines. A visible light filter (transmission
from 400 to 1000 nm) was used to provide a much better defined UV spectrum. A pinhole slide was used so that the converted light could be considered a point source. This is necessary
because the isotropic luminescence of the phosphor means that
light is emitted equally in all directions, so therefore some will
not be captured by the optical power meter. To account for this
loss, a solid angle correction factor was applied to the optical
power meter reading. The correction factor was determined as
the solid angle made by the pinhole and the circumference of the
hemispherical
optical power meter as a fraction of the entire
solid angle. Fused silica was selected as the coating substrate
because it is transparent at the illumination wavelengths. The

Fig. 4. Conversion efficiency versus wavelength for the three coatings tested.
As in Fig. 1, the coating has been deposited onto a fused silica slide.

long pass filter was used to block out any of the incident UV
light that may have passed though the coating. To measure the
sensor quantum efficiency, the same light source as described
above was used along with a DALSA CA-D1-0256 camera. The
camera was clocked in time delay and integration (TDI) mode
at a line rate and data rate of 18.3 kHz and 5.0 MHz, respectively. For PRNU measurements, the camera was operated in
the normal area imaging mode.
Fig. 4 contains a plot showing the conversion efficiency as
a function of wavelength for the three coatings tested. Inspection of the figure reveals that the additional pure plastic layer
almost doubles the efficiency at 265 nm, from 19% to 35% for
the 2212-2 and two-layer 2212-2 coatings, respectively [13]. An
SEM analysis performed on the two-layer coating shows that the
coating is 30 2 m thick.
The two-layer coating was deposited onto DALSA IA-D10256 area array sensors. The coating was applied as a thick
and thin coating with an estimated thickness of less than 20
m and greater than 50 m, respectively. These estimates were
based on the measured absorption coefficient of a coated fused
silica slide, which was found, using Beers law, to be 15
1 m at 265 nm [13]. A simple calculation of the predicted
coated sensor quantum efficiency is given as the quantum efficiency of the sensor at the phosphor emission wavelength, 0.40,
multiplied by the coating conversion efficiency, 0.35, to give
14%. A plot of the quantum efficiency of both the thick and
thin two-layer coating, and the uncoated sensor as a function
of wavelength is given in Fig. 5. The figure shows that the measured coated sensor quantum efficiency is 12% 0.8% at an
illumination wavelength of 265 nm. This improvement represents a 3.5x improvement in sensor quantum efficiency. (Note
that the nonzero quantum efficiency of the uncoated sensor is
due to the residual blue response of the uncoated sensor.)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 50, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2003

Fig. 5. Quantum efficiency of a DALSA IA-DA-0156 image sensor with a

two-layer 2212-1 coating as a function of wavelength.
TABLE III
PRNU RESULTS OF AN UNCOATED AND COATED SENSOR FOR THE TWO-LAYER
THICK AND THIN 2212 COATING AND THE SETTLE DEPOSITION METHOD

Fig. 6. Simulated CTF of the coated sensor.

image sensor. It is a measure of the sensors ability to image

a pattern of equidistantly spaced black and white bar pairs. The
CTF differs from the modulation transfer function (MTF) in that
the CTF is the response to a square wave input rather than a
sinusoidal input pattern. The CTF is defined as
(4)

V. PRNU
PRNU is a measure of pixel-to-pixel variations in sensor responsivity. Ideally the PRNU is zero, meaning that under constant flat field illumination every pixel will have the same responsivity. However, in reality, the PRNU of an uncoated sensor
is typically on the order of 5%10% [15]. The PRNU degradation due to the coating is a simple, nondestructive test that can be
used to quantify nonuniformities in the coating thickness. This
parameter is of particular importance for image sensors where
coating nonuniformity will contribute to resolution degradation.
In this investigation, PRNU is defined as the standard % rms calculation:
PRNU
where
is the standard deviation of the difference between
pixel output and the average pixel output across the entire array
is the average output at
as measured at 50% of saturation,
is the output at zero illumination.
100% of saturation, and
For comparison purposes, the PRNU of the uncoated sensor was
first measured at the coating emission wavelength. The PRNU
of the sensor coated with the two-layer 2212 coating was 7.0 and
1.6 times larger than the uncoated sensor for the thick and thin
coating, respectively (see Table III). Note that the signal output
of each pixel of the coated sensor was found to have a linear relationship with light intensity indicating that post-data processing
could be used to correct PRNU degradation. An improved deposition technique was developed to reduce the amount of PRNU
degradation; these results are described in Section VIII.
VI. CONTRAST TRANSFER FUNCTION
AND PHOTODEGRADATION
The contrast transfer function (CTF) quantifies the degree to
which a given spatial input frequency can be reproduced by the

and output
are the maximum and minimum
where output
and input
are the
output signal, respectively, and input
maximum and minimum input signal. A CTF equal to one indicates that the sensor can perfectly image the target (assuming
an optical transfer function equal to unity).
The CTF is one of the most difficult imaging parameters to
quantify. The following experiment was performed in an attempt
to determine an approximate CTF value for a thick and thin
two-layer coating 2212-2. A precision 100- m-wide slit was
imaged onto a coated DALSA IL-P1 line scan sensor at an illumination wavelength of 265 nm. A lens of magnification 0.5
was used to image the 100- m slit down to 50 m at the sensor.
The line rate and light intensity were adjusted to ensure that the
pixels did not reach their full-well capacity and spill charge into
neighboring pixels. A digital oscilloscope was used to measure
the analog signal generated at the illuminated pixels. Six pixels
were actually illuminated (four fully and two partially); an approximation that five pixels (with a pixel pitch of 10 m) were
illuminated was used for this analysis.
To quantify the CTF degradation of the coated sensors, the
normalized output signal was plotted as a function of the pixel
number. The CTF data of the coated sensors had a Gaussian
shape due to the scattering of light by the coating. A Gaussian
distribution was fitted to the observed data to simulate the response of the coated sensor to an alternating bar target with
50- m-wide light and dark regions. Fig. 6 gives the simulated
response for two thicknesses of coatings; coating 1 is estimated
to be less than 20 m thick and coating 2 greater than 20 m.
If the optical transfer function is assumed to be 1.0, meaning a
difference in the normalized input signal is 1.0 (a valid assumption given that the spatial frequency is 100 lp/mm), then the CTF
for the thin and thick coating is 0.9 and 0.4, respectively. These
findings confirm that the thinner coating is better for imaging
applications.
The photostability of the 2212 phosphor was tested. The twolayer 2212-2 coating was deposited onto a fused silica slide and

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357

VIII. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Fig. 7. Phosphor conversion efficiency as a function of net incident

illumination by radiation at 255 nm. Note that radiation hardening to a constant
level of conversion efficiency occurs within illumination by the first 1 mJ/cm
of radiation.

The coatings presented here are a viable alternative to organic

phosphor coatings for enhanced UV responsivity of CCD image
sensors. The coating radiation hardens to 50% of the peak initial
efficiency within the first 5% of the test period. It is this characteristic of the coating that improves its viability in continuous
manufacturing applications. The phosphor coating improves the
quantum efficiency of the sensor by as much as a factor of 3.5
at 265 nm. In general, thinner coatings exhibit better imaging
qualities; the PRNU and CTF are reduced by 75% and 56%, respectively, when a thinner coating is applied.
The results of the settle-method deposition are promising as
they demonstrate that the PRNU can be decreased by improving
the uniformity of the coating. One way to improve coating uniformity is to filter the phosphor to decrease variance in the particle
size distribution. Once this is done coatings with a thickness of a
certain number of particles can be designed. Laser ablation can
also be used; however, this is only feasible if the laser ablates
relatively large pieces of the phosphor so as not to disturb the
crystal structure that is essential to the luminescing properties.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge DALSA Corporation and
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council for
their generous support of this project as part of the DALSANSERC Industrial Research chair at the University of Waterloo.
In addition, the authors would like to thank Dr. D. Dykaar and
Dr. G. Ingram for their valuable contribution via discussions
and suggestions.

(a)

REFERENCES
(b)

Fig. 8. Image of flat-field illumination of a 128 128 pixel section of DALSA

IA-D1-0256 image sensor captured at (a) 265 nm (coated sensor) and (b) the
same sensor before coating at the phosphor emission wavelength 540 nm. The
average signal level for both images is 128 DN.

illuminated with 255-nm radiation at the following intensities:

0.12 W/cm for 3 h, 2.0 W/cm for 5 h, and 11.1 W/cm for
2.3 h. After each period of radiation, the conversion efficiency
was tested; the results are plotted in Fig. 7. It is apparent from
the results that the coating degrades to approximately 50% of
the peak efficiency, but then remains stable at this level. This
measured stabilization of the inorganic phosphor coating is a
considerable improvement over organic phosphor coatings that
exponentially degrade to zero efficiency [1].
VII. SETTLE-METHOD DEPOSITION RESULTS
The settle-method coating resulted in a quantum efficiency
of 12% at 300 nm and a PRNU degradation that was 0.36 times
higher than the PRNU of the uncoated sensor. This marks an improvement in the photoresponse nonuniformity degradation by a
factor of 4.4. Fig. 8(a) and (b) shows images from an uncoated
sensor illuminated at 540 nm and a coated sensor illuminated at
300 nm, respectively. The image from the coated sensor is generally quite uniform although some artifacts are visible.

[1] W. Viehmann, Thin-film scintillators for extended ultraviolet response

silicon detectors, Proc. SPIE, vol. 196, pp. 9095, 1979.
[2] M. Cullum, S. Deiries, S. DOdorico, and R. Reisse, Spectroscopy to
the atmospheric transmission limit with a coated GEC CCD, Astron.
Astrophys., vol. 153, pp. L1L3, 1985.
[3] L. B. Robinson, W. E. Brown, D. K. Gilmore, R. J. Stover, M. Z. Wei,
and J. C. Geary, Characteristics of large Ford and Reticon CCDs, Proc.
SPIE, vol. 1235, pp. 315326, 1990.
[4] G. R. Sims and G. Fabiola, Improvements in CCD quantum efficiency
in the UV and near-IR, Proc. SPIE, vol. 1071, pp. 3142, 1989.
[5] M. P. Lesser, Recent charge-coupled devices operation results at
Steward Observatory, Proc. SPIE, vol. 1242, pp. 164169, 1990.
[6]
, CCD thinning, coating, and mounting research for astronomy,
Proc. CCDs in Astronomy, vol. 8, pp. 6375, 1989.
[7] E. Meisenzahl et al., 3.2 million pixel full-frame true 2-phase CCD
image sensor incorporating transparent gate technology, Proc. SPIE,
vol. 3965, pp. 164169, 2000.
[8] M. M. Blouke, M. W. Cowens, J. E. Hall, J. A. Westphal, and A. B.
Christensen, Ultraviolet downconverting phosphor for use with silicon
CCD imagers, Appl. Opt., vol. 19, pp. 33183321, Oct. 1980.
[9] R. A. Bredthauer, C. E. Chandler, J. R. Janesick, T. W. McCurin, and G.
R. Sims, Recent CCD Technology Developments, in Instrumentation
for Ground-Based Optical Astronomy, L. B. Robinson, Ed. New York:
Springer-Verlag, 1987, pp. 486492.
[10] G. Naletto et al., Fluorescence of Metachrome in the far and vacuum
ultraviolet spectral region, Proc. SPIE, vol. 2519, pp. 3138, 1995.
[11] A. Wisniewski, private communication, 1999.
[12] K. H. Butler, Fluorescent Lamp Phosphors: Technology and
Theory. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994.
[13] W. A. R. Franks, M. J. Kiik, and A. Nathan, Inorganic phosphor coatings for UV-Responsive CCD image sensors, Proc. SPIE, vol. 3965,
pp. 3341, 2000.
[14] Datasheet, Osram Sylvania Ltd., Towanda, PA.
[15] DALSA Inc.. 19981999 Databook, Waterloo, ON, Canada. [Online].
Available: www.dalsa.com

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 50, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2003

Wendy A. R. Franks received the B. Appl. Sci.

degree in chemical engineering and the M. Appl. Sci.
degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1998 and
2000, respectively. She is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree in the field of biosensors at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, Zrich (ETHZ).
She completed her Masters research while in the
Internal Research Group at DALSA Corporation,
Waterloo.

Martin J. Kiik (M96) received the B. Appl. Sci. degree and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1986,
1989, and 1994, respectively, where his research involved the investigation of the dynamics of chemical
processes in rare-gas discharges in supersonic jet expansions.
Since 1994, he has been working in the Image
Sensor R&D group at DALSA Corporation, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Dr. Kiik is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada.

Arokia Nathan (S84M87SM99) received the

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 1988,
where he was engaged in research related to the
physics and numerical modeling of semiconductor
microsensors.
In 1987, he joined LSI Logic Corporation,
Santa Clara, CA, where he worked on advanced
multichip packaging techniques and related issues.
Subsequently, he was at the Institute of Quantum
Electronics, ETH Zrich, Switzerland. In 1989, he
joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, where he is currently a Professor. In 1995, he
was a Visiting Professor at the Physical Electronics Laboratory, ETH Zrich.
His present research interests lie in amorphous and polycrystalline silicon
devices, circuits, and systems on rigid and mechanically flexible substrates for
digital imaging and displays. His interests have more recently encompassed
polymer electronics, specifically on aspects related to the physics, technology,
and applications of organic thin film transistors, displays, and sensors. He
currently holds the DALSA/NSERC industrial research chair in sensor
technology and is a recipient of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship. He has published extensively in the field
of sensor technology and CAD and is a coauthor of the book, Microtransducer
CAD (New York: Springer, 1999).