Prof. Edoardo Charbon

The art of creating monolithic single-photon photodetectors is a mix of design skills and device physics knowledge, and it requires an understanding of the mechanisms underlying single-photon detection in highly complex integrated systems.  This lecture describes the basics of single-photon counting in complementary metal oxide semiconductors, through single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs), and the making of miniaturized pixels with photon-counting capability based on SPADs. Some applications, which may take advantage of SPAD image sensors, are outlined, such as fluorescence-based microscopy, three-dimensional time-of-flight imaging and biomedical imaging, to name just a few. The lecture focuses on architectures that are best suited to those applications and the trade-offs they generate. In this context, architectures are described that efficiently collect the output of single pixels when designed in large arrays. Off-chip readout circuit requirements are described for a variety of applications in physics, medicine and the life sciences. Owing to the dynamic nature of SPADs, designs featuring a large number of SPADs require careful analysis of the target application for an optimal use of silicon real estate and of limited readout bandwidth. 

Biography:

Edoardo Charbon (SM’00) received the Diploma degree from ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, the M.S. degree from the University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and electrical engineering and computer science. He is a consultant for numerous organizations, including Bosch, Texas Instruments, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems, from 1995 to 2000, where he was an Architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. From 2002 to 2008, he was a Faculty Member with the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was involved in research on CMOS sensors, biophotonics, and ultra low-power wireless embedded systems. In 2008, he joined Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, as a Full Professor of VLSI design, succeeding Patrick Dewilde. He has authored or co-authored over 250 papers in journals, conference proceedings, magazines, and two books, and he holds 18 patents. His current research interests include 3-D imaging, advanced bio- and medical imaging, quantum integrated circuits, and space-based detection. Dr. Charbon was a Guest Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTERAIDED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS and the IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS and a member of the Chair of Technical Committee of ESSCIRC, ICECS, ISLPED, VLSI-SOC, and IEDM. He is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the W. M. Keck Institute for Space, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.

Prof. Edoardo Charbon

Biography: