ABSTRACT
Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have become the detector of choice for sensitive, highly precise measurement of light over the electromagnetic spectrum from the near-infrared to the x-ray band. CCDs have high quantum efficiency because photons interact via photoabsorption in the depletion layer, which directly results in one or more electrons promoted into the conduction band of the silicon lattice, and are very efficiently collected by the CCD. In almost all CCDs, charges are stored either directly at the oxide–semiconductor interface (surface-channel device) or deeper within an epitaxial layer (buried-channel device). Perhaps the most exacting application of CCDs has been to astronomy, a discipline in which the characteristics of the CCD need to be pushed to their limits in order to gain the optimum performance. The known conversion between particle energy deposition and liberated charge means that CCDs can be used as spectroscopic detectors, and such an application has been proposed for inertial-confinement fusion diagnostics.
