and qe as discussed above referring to fig2 a temporal smear is minimized by pulsing the clock phases in a manner such that intra phase charge transfer occurs at two equal intervals of time t 2 within the total time encompassed by one complete clock period these clock pulses are negative going pulses and are extremely short in duration equal to u03c4 relative to one clock cycle of one phase it should be noted that the duration of these pulses is limited by the time it takes charge to transfer out of one phase into the next where this time is typically limited by the rc time constant of the gate electrode given by equation 3 where r and c are the resistance and capacitance of the electrode per a given unit of length respectively and l is the length of the electrode the short pulse width results in any given gate electrode being at its maximum voltage for most of the clock period t u03c4 thereby maintaining the maximum depletion width and hence mtf it is to be understood that mtf will still be improved even if intraphase charge transfer does not occur exactly at t 2 intervals by virtue of realization of larger depletion regions by having u03c4 lt lt t that is to say that the temporal smear is only minimized by transferring charge at equal time intervals according to.