Negative Offset Operation of Four-Transistor CMOS Image Pixels for Increased Well Capacity and Suppressed Dark Current

This letter presents an electrical method to reduce dark current as well as increase well capacity of four-transistor pixels in a CMOS image sensor, utilizing a small negative offset voltage to the gate of the transfer (TX) transistor particularly only when the TX transistor is off. As a result, using a commercial pixel in a 0.18 ?m CMOS process...