Table 1.

Typical characteristics of different detectors used in single-molecule spectroscopy and imaging. QE: Quantum Efficiency; PC: Photocathode; ROS: Readout Stage. Except for the SPAD, the gain is expressed in counts per photo-electron, where “counts” is the number of electrons generated at the end of the photon conversion and photo-electron amplification processes. In other words, this is the number of electrons to be readout by the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) of the detector. In a SPAD, millions of secondary charge carriers per avalanche can be generated, but they are all read as a single “count”

Detector Type	QE @ 600 nm (%)	Gain (cts/photon)	PC Dark Count (d1) (e−/pixel/s)	ROS Dark Count (d2) (e−/pixel/s)	Readout Noise (e−/pixel/s rms)	Excess Noise Factor†	Model
CCD	95	1	0	0.002	5 @ 100 kHz 12 @ 2 MHz	1	PIXIS 512B, Roper Scientific
ILT CCD	62	1	0	0.05	6 @ 10 MHz 8 @ 20 MHz	1	CoolSnap HQ, Roper Scientific
ICCD Gen III	46	1,500	0.04	30	20 @ 1 MHz 32 @ 5 MHz	1.8	I-Pentamax, Roper Scientific
EMCCD	92	1,000	0.5	0	45 @ 5 MHz 60 @ 10 MHz	1.4	Cascade 512B, Roper Scientific
EBCCD/EBAPS	29	100	0.04	50	40 @ 54 MHz	1.1	NightVista E1100, Intevac
Photon Counting	68	1 (106)	100	0	0	1	SPCM-AQR-14, Perkin-Elmer

^†Excess noise factor value for maximum gain.