Charge-coupled Device - History

History

The charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith. The lab was working on semiconductor bubble memory when Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook, "Charge 'Bubble' Devices". A description of how the device could be used as a shift register and as a linear and area imaging devices was described in this first entry. The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the bucket-brigade device (BBD), which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s.

The initial paper describing the concept listed possible uses as a memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on an oxidized silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds.

The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register. This device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel linear imaging device. Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate. By 1971, Bell researchers Michael F. Tompsett et al. were able to capture images with simple linear devices.

Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA and Texas Instruments, picked up on the invention and began development programs. Fairchild's effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D 100 x 100 pixel device. Steven Sasson, an electrical engineer working for Kodak, invented the first digital still camera using a Fairchild 100 x 100 CCD in 1975. The first KH-11 KENNAN reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array (800 x 800 pixels) technology for imaging was launched in December 1976. Under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony also started a big development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass produce CCDs for their camcorders. Before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982; subsequently, a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution.

In January 2006, Boyle and Smith were awarded the National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize, and in 2009 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, for their work on the CCD.