A New Photon Counting Detector: Intensified CMOS-APS

Abstract

A new type of position sensor (CMOS-APS) used as readout system in MCP-based intensified photon counter is presented. Thanks to CMOS technology, the pixel addressing and the readout circuits as well as the analogue-to-digital converters are integrated into the chip. These unique characteristics make the CMOS-APS a very compact, low power consumption, photon counting system. The more classical Photon Counting Intensified CCDs (PC-ICCD), the selected CMOS-APS, the driving and interface electronics based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), and the adopted algorithm to compute the center of the luminous spot on the MCP phosphor screen are described.