LARGE CAPACITY, LARGE AREA VIDEO IMAGING SENSORS

77 Deleterious effects of high capacitance in large area, raster scanner image tubes, especially when employed in video cameras, can be overcome by employing the following features: 1. a plurality of transparent stripe signal electrodes; 2. a unique, multiple layer, solid state structure designed to provide a Displaced Electron Layer-Sensor-Target for imaging (hereinafter DELST), with and without; 3. photoconductive gain in the DELST structure; and 4. with and without intensifier gain in the DELST structure, the proper combination of these four features makes possible the construction of video sensor devices of extraordinarily large capacitance, having rasters generated by "low or high" velocity scanning electron beams, or a laser scanning ray. The invention provides a generic approach for the selection of features and their combination with the type of scanner best suited to any one application. The choice is dependent upon system requirements such as speed, spatial resolution, dynamic range, sensor-target size and cost.