Solid-state imaging device, method of driving same, and camera apparatus
AssigneeSony Corporation
InventorKeiji Mabuchi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A solid-state imaging device of a three-transistor pixel configuration having no selection transistor has a problem of a non-selection hot carrier white point, which is specific to this apparatus. A bias current during a non-reading period of pixels is made to flow to a pixel associated with an immediately previous selection pixel, for example, the immediately previous selection pixel itself. As a result, dark current only for one line occurs in each pixel, and the dark current for one line itself can be reduced markedly. Consequently, defective pixels due to non-selection hot carrier white points can be virtually eliminated.
Claims10
A solid-state imaging device comprising:
- a pixel section formed in such a manner that a unit pixel has only three transistors:
- a transfer transistor for transferring a signal of an optoelectric transducer to a floating diffusion section, an amplifier transistor for outputting a signal of said floating diffusion section to a signal line, and a resetting transistor for resetting said amplifier transistor;
- and
- driving means for selecting each pixel of said pixel section by controlling the voltages of the drain and the gate of said resetting transistor and a sequence of voltages applied to the drain and gate of the reset transistor causing a bias current supplied to said signal line to flow to a pixel associated with an immediately previous selected pixel row during a non-reading period of pixels.
A solid-state imaging device comprising:
- a pixel section formed in such a manner that a unit pixel has only three transistors:
- a transfer transistor for transferring a signal of an optoelectric transducer to a floating diffusion section, an amplifier transistor for outputting a signal of said floating diffusion section to a signal line, and a resetting transistor for resetting said amplifier transistor;
- and
- driving means for selecting each pixel of said pixel section by controlling the voltages of the drain and the gate of said resetting transistor and circuitry setting a drain voltage of said resetting transistor to be an intermediate voltage between the power-supply voltage level and the ground level during the non-reading period of pixels.
A solid-state imaging device comprising:
- a pixel section formed in such a manner that a unit pixel having three transistors:
- a transfer transistor for transferring a signal of an optoelectric transducer to a floating diffusion section, an amplifier transistor for outputting a signal of said floating diffusion section to a signal line, and a resetting transistor for resetting said amplifier transistor;
- and
- driving means that selects each pixel of said pixel section by controlling the voltages of the drain and the gate of said resetting transistor and for providing a resetting pulse whose voltage value on the high level side is higher than the voltage value of the power-supply voltage, to the gate of said resetting transistor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.