A buffer direct injection and direct injection readout circuit with mode selection design for infrared focal plane arrays

• It proposes an amplifier shared by dual pixels can have both DI and BDI functions.
• The pixel readout circuit use pixel area sharing to reduce the area occupied.
• The technology can increase injection efficiency and resolution for detector.

This paper proposes a solution to the excessive area penalty associated with traditional buffer direct injection (BDI) for single pixel. The proposed solution reduces the area and power consumption of BDI to combine the direct injection (DI) within a shared architecture, while a dual-mode readout circuit expands the functionality and performance of the array readout circuit of infrared sensor. An experimental array of 10 × 8 readout circuits was fabricated using TSMC 2P4M 0.35 μm 5 V technology. Measurements were obtained using a main clock with a frequency of 3 MHz and power consumption of 9.94 mW. The minimum input current was 119 pA in BDI and 1.85 pA in DI. The signal swing was 2 V, the root mean square noise voltage was 1.84 mV, and the signal-to-noise ratio was 60 dB. This approach is applicable to mid- and long-band sensors to increase injection efficiency and resolution.