Fully Depleted Charge-Coupled Devices

We have developed fully depleted, back-illuminated CCDs thatbuild upon earlier research and development efforts directed towardstechnology development of silicon-strip detectors used inhigh-energy-physics experiments. The CCDs are fabricated on the same typeof high-resistivity, float-zone-refined silicon that is used for stripdetectors. The use of high-resistivity substrates allows for thickdepletion regions, on the order of 200-300 um, with corresponding highdetection efficiency for near-infrared andsoft x-ray photons. We comparethe fully depleted CCD to thep-i-n diode upon which it is based, anddescribe the use of fully depleted CCDs in astronomical and x-ray imagingapplications