Solid-state imaging apparatus and method for driving the same

A solid-state imaging apparatus comprising:

• a solid-state imaging device including a semiconductor substrate, photodiodes which are two-dimensionally formed on said semiconductor substrate, and vertical CCDs having at least one arranged read-out gate and non-read-out gate for each of said photodiodes, the read-out gate being for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode, and the non-read-out gate being not for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode;
• and
• a driving pulse control unit operable to control said solid-state imaging device by applying driving pulses to said respective read-out gates and non-read-out gates at predetermined timings,
• wherein said solid-state imaging device is operable to read out electric charge accumulated in all of said photodiodes to said vertical CCDs by executing N-times of read-out operations, and
• said driving pulse control unit is operable to:
• apply driving pulses sequentially for changing N-numbers of read-out gates from stand-by LOW-voltage states to MIDDLE-voltage states;
• and
• apply a driving pulse for maintaining a LOW-voltage state of at least one of non-read-out gates adjacent to N-1th read-out gate and Nth read-out gate in an order of the change among said non-read-out gates, during the change starting with the N-1th read-out gate and ending with the Nth read-out gate.

A solid-state imaging apparatus comprising:

• a solid-state imaging device including a semiconductor substrate, photodiodes which are two-dimensionally formed on said semiconductor substrate, and vertical CCDs having at least one arranged read-out gate and non-read-out gate for each of said photodiodes, the read-out gate being for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode, and the non-read-out gate being not for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode;
• and
• a driving pulse control unit operable to control said solid-state imaging device by applying driving pulses to said respective read-out gates and non-read-out gates at predetermined timings,
• wherein said driving pulse control unit is operable to apply driving pulses sequentially to said respective read-out gates in order to change said read-out gates from stand-by LOW-voltage states to MIDDLE-voltage states simultaneously.

A solid-state imaging apparatus comprising:

• a solid-state imaging device including a semiconductor substrate, photodiodes which are two-dimensionally formed on said semiconductor substrate, and vertical CCDs having at least one arranged read-out gate and non-read-out gate for each of said photodiodes, the read-out gate being for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode, and the non-read-out gate being not for reading out accumulated electric charge from the associated photodiode;
• and
• a driving pulse control unit operable to control said solid-state imaging device by applying driving pulses to said respective read-out gates and non-read-out gates at predetermined timings,
• wherein said driving pulse control unit is further operable to apply driving pulses for changing all of gates from LOW-voltage states to MIDDLE-voltage states at a starting time of transfer operation of a field or a frame, said gates being composed of N-numbers of read-out gates and at least N-numbers of non-read-out gates, and the application being executed as a transition operation preparatory to the transfer operation.