Thermoelectric Cooling for CMOS Sensors
Introduction
For nearly 50 years CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors have competed on cost and performance in a wide range of digital imaging applications. Peltier coolers (thermoelectric coolers) have cooled both technologies when the requirement demanded high-resolution images. Design engineers opted to use CCD’s for astrophotography, super-resolution microscopy, x-ray crystallography, and spectrophotometric assays. On the other hand, CMOS sensors made inexpensive digital photography a reality.