A SPAD Array Sensor based on Breakdown Pixel Extraction Architecture with Background Readout for Scintillation Detector

This paper proposes a SPAD array sensor based on breakdown pixel extraction architecture with background readout for scintillation detectors. The proposed architecture extracts the addresses of only the breakdown pixels during the exposure time of the next frame. Therefore, this sensor minimizes the dead time and improve the readout efficiency. A SPAD array sensor was fabricated in a 0.18 mu m CMOS process. According to the measurement results under the dark condition, the duty cycle of the exposure time is 1.25 times higher than the previous work. This high duty cycle improves the probability to detect the incident photons occurring closely in time and achieves an efficient event detection.