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Image sensors in thin film on ASIC (TFA) technology are composed of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film detectors on top of crystalline ASIC's. With regard to advanced imaging systems, TFA provides enhanced performance and more flexibility than conventional technologies. Extensive on-chip signal processing is feasible, as well as small pixels for high-resolution imagers. Several prototypes of TFA sensors have been developed, optimized for considerably different applications. This paper focuses on a TFA sensor for automotive vision systems that allows each pixel to adapt its individual sensitivity to the local illumination intensity. By this means, a dynamic range of 120-dB minimum along with high local contrast is achieved. The recent second prototype array consists of 368/spl times/256 pixels with an area of 40/spl times/38 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ each. The ASIC's were fabricated in a 0.7-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, whereupon the a-Si:H thin film was deposited in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition cluster system.
Lulé et al. (Sat,) studied this question.