Studying amplifier glow in p-channel silicon MOSFETs using Skipper-CCDs

We study the amplifier light emission of a set of MOSFET transistors with different Drain-Source to Gate (DS-G) distances using a dedicated Skipper-CCD sensor with single photon resolution. This light emission comes in the form of near-infrared photons produced on the Skipper’s readout stage by "hot electrons" generated in the output transistor. Depending on the applied voltages, this effect can be very faint generating only a few photons or produce a noticeable glow that can greatly impact the quality of the CCD images. A dedicated sensor with four output transistors and a different Drain-Source to Gate distance in each of them was specifically designed and fabricated at Teledyne/DALSA in order to study this phenomenon. Two different methods to characterize photons from the amplifier were explored. The first one takes advantage of the Skipper’s spatial resolution to study the total number of photons being emitted and how they propagate through silicon in the active area. The second one uses the single-electron counting mode of the device to measure the rate at which photons are emitted only in the readout stage.