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Phys.org: Yonsei University, Korea, researches manages to enhance 10nm-thin Si layer sensitivity all the way to 1550nm. Science paper "Breaking the absorption limit of Si toward SWIR wavelength range via strain engineering" by Ajit K. Katiyar, Kean You Thai, Won Seok Yun, JaeDong Lee, and Jong-Hyun Ahn shows the results:

"Silicon has been widely used in the microelectronics industry. However, its photonic applications are restricted to visible and partial near-infrared spectral range owing to its fundamental optical bandgap (1.12 eV). With recent advances in strain engineering, material properties, including optical bandgap, can be tailored considerably. This paper reports the strain-induced shrinkage in the Si bandgap, providing photosensing well beyond its fundamental absorption limit in Si nanomembrane (NM) photodetectors (PDs). The Si-NM PD pixels were mechanically stretched (biaxially) by a maximum strain of ~3.5% through pneumatic pressure–induced bulging, enhancing photoresponsivity and extending the Si absorption limit up to 1550 nm, which is the essential wavelength range of the lidar sensors for obstacle detection in self-driving vehicles. The development of deformable three-dimensional optoelectronics via gas pressure–induced bulging also facilitated the realization of unique device designs with concave and convex hemispherical architectures, which mimics the electronic prototypes of biological eyes."

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Hailo presentation on edge AI vision processing shows that one needs 80K MAC operations per pixel to achieve a 86% image classification accuracy. This can require quite a high power consumption, depending on the image resolution and a frame rate:

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KoreanInvestors quotes Omdia Research claiming that Samsung gradually reduces the market share gap with Sony:

"According to market researcher OMDIA, the global market share gap in the CMOS image sensor between Sony and Samsung has narrowed significantly this year.

Sony’s global market share, which rose to as high as 56.2% in the third quarter of 2019, fell to an estimated 42.5% in the second quarter of 2020.

In the same period, the market share of Samsung, the world’s No. 2 image sensor maker, rose to 21.7% from 16.7%, narrowing the gap with the Japanese company to 20.8 percentage points from 39.5 percentage points.

Analysts attribute Samsung’s advancement in the image sensor market to the increase in shipments of its high-end products and a growing client base such as Chinse electronics firm Xiaomi Corp.

“Image sensors are one of the three key products of Samsung in its system chip product lines that can become the world’s number one,” said Inyup Kang, head of System LSI Business & President at Samsung.

The global spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus also played a role in Samsung’s greater market share, as many U.S. consumer electronics companies are delaying the launch of new products, using Sony’s image sensors, while Samsung’s major clients in China have raised their order volumes of image sensors.

Samsung plans to focus on high-end products to raise its market share as the global market of high-resolution image sensors are estimated to rise at an average annual rate of 87% until 2024.

SK Hynix unveiled new CMOS image sensors under the brand “Black Pearl,” targeting a mid-tier market last year. Its market share rose from around 2% in 2019 to 3.4% in the second quarter of this year."

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EPFL and Glasgow University publish Arxiv paper "Quantum illumination imaging with a single-photon avalanche diode camera" by Hugo Defienne, Jiuxuan Zhao, Edoardo Charbon, and Daniele Faccio.

"Single-photon-avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays are essential tools in biophotonics, optical ranging and sensing and quantum optics. However, their small number of pixels, low quantum efficiency and small fill factor have so far hindered their use for practical imaging applications. Here, we demonstrate full-field entangled photon pair correlation imaging using a 100-kpixels SPAD camera. By measuring photon coincidences between more than 500 million pairs of positions, we retrieve the full point spread function of the imaging system and subsequently high-resolution images of target objects illuminated by spatially entangled photon pairs. We show that our imaging approach is robust against stray light, enabling quantum imaging technologies to move beyond laboratory experiments towards real-world applications such as quantum LiDAR."

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Brookman shows how its BT008D pToF sensors excels in finger gesture recognition in comparison with competing ToF solutions. The demo is prepared in collaboration with Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., one of Brookman's major investors.

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Synopsys shows MIPI C-PHY/D-PHY IP Performance at 24 Gbps. MIPI C-PHY/D-PHY IP interoperating with an unspecified image sensor in C-PHY mode up to 3.5 Gsps per trio and D-PHY mode up to 4.5 Gbps per lane. The IP is available in FinFET processes for camera applications:

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Newsight Imaging publish a webinar explaining its NSI1000 eTOF sensor operation:

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A Youtube video explains seemingly impossible effects described in EPFL and Canon Archive.org paper published a few weeks ago:

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SeekingAlpha publishes Sony earnings call transcript with some updates on image sensor business:

"Next is in IS&S, Image Sensing & Solutions. Fiscal '20 quarter one sales decreased 11% year-on-year to ¥206.2 billion, and operating income decreased ¥24.1 billion to ¥25.4 billion.

Fiscal '20 sales are expected to decrease 7% to ¥1 trillion, and operating income is expected to decrease ¥105.6 billion to ¥130 billion. Now I will explain the state of our sensor business. Fiscal '20 sales of image sensors for mobile products are expected to decrease compared to fiscal '19, primarily due to a decrease in end-user product sales by one of our major customers, the deceleration of the smartphone market and a shift to mid-range and moderately priced models in that market resulting from the impact of the spread of COVID-19 and significant reduction in component and finished goods inventory by Chinese customer. Profitability is expected to be impacted by a decrease in gross margins and an increase in depreciation and manufacturing-related costs associated with production equipment we purchased in the previous fiscal year when we expected growth as well as higher research and development costs.

We do not expect to grow sales of mobile sensing products compared to fiscal '19 because adoption by smartphone makers has been slow and sales of flagship models, which already use our products have decreased due to the shift in market conditions. Sales of image sensors to AV have also decreased due to the contraction of the sensor market for digital cameras, resulting from the impact of the spread of COVID-19. We expect the market to contract in 1 year as much as we had previously expected it would contract over the next approximately 3 years.

In order to respond quickly to the changes in the environment, especially for image sensors for mobile products, we will modify our strategy, mainly in the areas of investment, research and development and customer base. We have already significantly reduced investment in capacity to supply demand in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, because we can supply that demand by stockpiling strategic inventory through utilization of our excess production capacity this fiscal year.

The forecast for cumulative capital expenditures for the 3 fiscal years began April 1, 2018, which we explained in the past, has been reduced ¥50 billion from approximately ¥700 billion to approximately ¥650 billion. And we are carefully reviewing the timing of planned capital expenditures in fiscal '21 and beyond. We will review the projects and priorities for research and development spending as well to ensure that they fit with the recent trends in the smartphone market and changes in our major customers' needs. However, in order to maintain and increase our future technological competitive advantage, we will not drastically reduce the number of projects or the budget. We intend to more proactively expand and diversify our customer base, which we're cautious to do previously due to production capacity constraints.

Over the mid- to long term, we will work to expand the applications for image sensors and the market overall by introducing edge-sensing products that use senses equipped with AI processing functionality, and we will steadfastly work to grow this business. We plan to complete within approximately 1 year an enhancement of our business model to adapt to the recent changes in the environment, and we expect to return the business to the path of profit growth from the second half of fiscal '21.

....About sensors, changes in the market and how are the changes occurring. For one thing, all over the world, there is poor sense in the market, deterioration of the market, and that is impacting the sensor sales. And also, the higher-priced products, well, it's, you could say, shifting to the moderate -- more moderate-priced models overall. So for our image sensors, especially the high-end image sensors that we sell, the high-end models are decreasing in sales. So that's impacting our business.

But as far as a large trend is concerned, the phones -- smartphones going larger and using multiple lenses, that will continue. The performance of -- for the cameras required for smartphones, for video and the camera photos, the demand for the higher quality will continue. Therefore, we believe the demand should come back sometime in the future.

...regarding image sensor, the capacity and the capacity factor and the second quarter. So the capacity for this quarter, for fiscal 2020 at the end of first quarter, and that's -- that's 133,000 per month at the master price; and also at the end of second -- of the second quarter, 135,000 per month. So we will gradually increase the capacity. That's our plan.

And also, the number of wafers to be input. The first quarter the actual figure is -- the average of 3 months is 126,000 for mobile and also for digital camera, and there were some adjustments made for production. And also for the projection for second quarter for that, the simple average for 3 months is 112,000. So for mobile and digital camera, I think there's going to be more production adjustment.

And then, well, for Sensing segment, the sales is expected to come down, and what is the magnitude of the impact? Well, last year, actual was a little over of ¥230 billion and it's a strong ¥230 billion. So generally, it's like 1/3 of that is the reduction in sensors or sensing products. That's 1/3. So a big point about that is that as of last year, we thought that the growth can be expected. So we made the capital investment and also, we have increased our R&D expenditures. And that has been the impact."

In a separate news, a Twitter post presents CIS market share chart from an unidentified Korean source. It shows a Q2 2020 market share taken away by somebody from both Sony and Samsung:

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Sony reports a drop of image sensor sales in its last fiscal quarter started on April 1, 2020:

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Sony presents a number of use cases for its REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance - a separate box for now. Possibly, Sony intends to integrate some of its functionality onto the AI-enabled image sensors in the future. The power consumption of the Edge Analytics Appliance box is 40W.

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BusinessWire: Renesas introduced an UHD surveillance camera reference design to address today’s high-accuracy object detection and recognition needs for video security and surveillance systems. Developed in collaboration with Novatek Microelectronics and designed by Systemtec Corporation Ltd, the reference design includes a camera image sensor board with PDAF, and a ISP board along with auto focus zoom lens software.

Built around Renesas’ RAA462113FYL CMOS sensor and Novatek’s dual core SoC ISP, the surveillance camera reference design uses several other Renesas ICs that address its signal chain electrical functions. The CIS board includes the RAA462113FYL, DC/DC buck converters, LDOs, motor driver and lens. The ISP board features the SoC and associated signal chain components.

“An ever-increasing demand for security and surveillance camera systems drives the need for better object detection and recognition capabilities with higher imaging accuracy,” said DK Singh, Director, Systems and Solutions Team at Renesas. “Our surveillance camera with 4K resolution and PDAF function can deliver much faster autofocus results compared with conventional contrast-detection autofocus. We are excited that our close collaboration with Novatek and Systemtec makes this surveillance system reference design more accessible for customers worldwide.”

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ASM Q2 2020 investor presentation reports weaker booking for CIS packaging and shows its camera module assembly solutions:

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According to IBK Securities report, Galaxycore becomes the world's #3 in CIS units market share (left chart below). However, Omnivision still keeps #3 spot in terms of revenue (right chart).


i-Micronews: GalaxyCore files for IPO on Shanghai’s Science and Technology Innovation Board (Star Stock Market) worth as much as CNY 6.96 billion (USD 991.62 million). According to Frost&Sullivan, in 2019, the company shipped 1.31 billion image sensors, occupying a 20.7% volume market share globally. In terms of revenue, it ranked eighth with CNY 3.19 billion.

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AIP Applied Physics Reviews publishes National University of Singapore paper "Black phosphorus photonics toward on-chip applications" by Li Huang and Kah-Wee Ang.

"Unceasing efforts have been devoted to photonics based on black phosphorus ever since it came under the spotlight of two-dimensional materials research six years ago. The direct bandgap of black phosphorus is tunable by layer number, vertical electric field, and chemical doping, covering a broad spectrum for efficient light manipulation. The optical anisotropy further enables the identification and control of light polarization. Along with high carrier mobility, nonlinear optical properties, and integration capability due to its layered lattice structure, black phosphorus manifests itself as a promising multipurpose material for chip-scale optoelectronics. In this manuscript, we review the research on black phosphorus photonics, with a focus on the most fundamental active functions in photonic circuits: photodetection, electro-optic modulation, light emission, and laser pulse generation, aiming at evaluating the feasibility of integrating these black phosphorus-based components as a compact system for on-chip applications."

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ID Quantique (IDQ) announces that its image sensor based Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) chip has been integrated in the Vietnamese ‘Vsmart Aris 5G’ smartphone.

“With its compact size and low power consumption, our latest Quantis QRNG chip can be embedded in a smartphone to ensure trusted authentication and encryption of sensitive information. It brings a new level of security to the mobile phone industry. This is truly the first mass market application of quantum technologies,” says Grégoire Ribordy, CEO and co-founder of ID Quantique.

“Implementing ID Quantique QRNG in the Aris 5G smartphone is part of getting VinSmart customers access to the most advanced technology in the world. This breakthrough in terms of quantum enhanced security technology offers benefits for services including banking, medical data and personal information. In the near future, Vinsmart will continue to research and perfect the next-generation of its 5G offering to accelerate the universalization of this technology in VietNam,” says Tran Minh Trung, Deputy CEO of VinSmart.


IDQ opens a dedicated web page "Quantum Random Number Generation (QRNG) for mobile phones."

"At its core, the QRNG chip contains a light-emitting diode (LED) and an image sensor. Due to quantum noise, the LED emits a random number of photons, which are captured and counted by the image sensor’s pixels, giving a series of raw random numbers that can be accessed directly by the user applications. These numbers are also fed to a deterministic random bit generator algorithm (DRBG) which distills further the entropy of quantum origin to produce random bits in compliancy to NIST 800-90A/B/C standard.

The Quantis QRNG Chip allows live status verification: if a failure is detected in the physical process, the random bit stream is immediately disabled, the user is notified, and an automatic recovery procedure is performed to produce QRNG data again."

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Phys.org, OSA Optica: University of Glasgow, TU Delft, and Politecnico di Milano publishe a paper "Spatial images from temporal data" by Alex Turpin, Gabriella Musarra, Valentin Kapitany, Francesco Tonolini, Ashley Lyons, Ilya Starshynov, Federica Villa, Enrico Conca, Francesco Fioranelli, Roderick Murray-Smith, and Daniele Faccio.

"Traditional paradigms for imaging rely on the use of a spatial structure, either in the detector (pixels arrays) or in the illumination (patterned light). Removal of the spatial structure in the detector or illumination, i.e., imaging with just a single-point sensor, would require solving a very strongly ill-posed inverse retrieval problem that to date has not been solved. Here, we demonstrate a data-driven approach in which full 3D information is obtained with just a single-point, single-photon avalanche diode that records the arrival time of photons reflected from a scene that is illuminated with short pulses of light. Imaging with single-point time-of-flight (temporal) data opens new routes in terms of speed, size, and functionality. As an example, we show how the training based on an optical time-of-flight camera enables a compact radio-frequency impulse radio detection and ranging transceiver to provide 3D images."

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Forbes contributor Stephen McBride publishes his view on Sony CIS business:

"The growth in sensor sales over the past three years has been nothing short of remarkable. This year Sony will generate more profits from imaging than any of its other business lines. Sensors are on track to generate $1.92 billion in profits… 10% more than Sony’s long-established gaming arm.

Sony absolutely dominates the image sensor industry, accounting for over 50% of global sales.

The battle among smartphone firms to make better cameras has been a boon for Sony. It controls over 70% of the smartphone sensor market. And it’s been the exclusive maker of image sensors for every iPhone since 2010.

And when it comes to quality, Sony is in a league of its own. Its image sensors are so far ahead, it charges 2X as much as its closest competitor.

Right now, Sony’s world-class imaging business is flying under the radar. But as the computer vision boom takes off, I expect the stock to attract a lot of hype. And with image sensors becoming a larger part of Sony’s business, it could easily soar 300%+ in the coming years."

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VentureBeat, Forbes: Density, a San Francisoco-based startup building AI-powered 3D cameras, closes a $51M investment round, following $23M in previous funding.

Density uses 3D depth cameras and an AI cloud-based software to enable social distancing and occupancy analytics. Pepsi, Delta, Verizon, Uber, Marriot, and ExxonMobil are among its clients that use its service to figure out which parts of their offices get the most use and which the least and to deliver people-counting metrics to hundreds and thousands of their employees.

The Density 3D camera consists of over 800 components sourced from 137 supply chains. The camera attaches above a doorway and tracks movement with two Class 1 infrared lasers. The data is transferred via Wi-Fi to Density’s cloud-hosted backend, where it’s processed and analyzed. A web dashboard, SMS messages, signage, and mobile apps provide insights like the real-time capacity of a room and historical crowd sizes, while an API allows third-party apps, services, and websites to make use of the data in many other ways.

Density’s infrared tracking method offers a major advantage over other approaches: privacy. Unlike a security camera, its sensors can’t determine the gender or ethnicity of the people it tracks, nor perform invasive facial recognition. “It’s far easier to do a camera,” says Density CEO Andrew Farah. “But we believe the data pendulum has swung too far in one direction. It’s good to see people ask about data being collected … We knew that the right market was corporate clients with office space because our sensor can do occupancy detection inside of a room where a camera can’t go.”

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SeekingAlpha: Tower Q2 2020 earnings call has few updates on the foundry's imaging business:

"Moving to our Sensor Business unit, we forecast single-digit year-over-year growth in spite of several segments being strongly adversely impacted by COVID-19. For example, dental x-ray sensors where we have major market share. The impact is mainly seen in the form of customer requests to push out orders, dental clinics were closed for a long period and are still not back to full speed hence customers are very inventory cautious. Industrial sensors namely manufacturing line inspections is also down as a function of reduced new manufacturing line build out. Due to our very strong CIS platform and compatibility, our fingerprint sensors namely the under OLED 101 sensor and the under LCD lens type modules, we were developed and qualified in very short times. We target our first volume production revenue in the fourth quarter wrapping throughout 2021.

Our time-of-flight program is moving along very well. We are prototyping the first sensor to our lead customer this quarter and plans for after production in the first half of next year. This would be our first product moving to mass production utilizing our stacked wafer BSI pixel level bonding platform.

And as stated, for us, one of the beauties of that market is that we were able to very, very quickly develop and qualify flows because of a very, very strong and diverse CIS core that we have throughout the company. So CMOS image sensor throughout the company, and take advantage of a market need. As far as the time-of- flight, there's a variety of applications are going out for time of flight. It's predominantly at 300 millimeter. And it's focused with backside illumination and stack wafers. And that is also more than one customer with blue chip customers that are signed up on long-term agreements. Of course, we have to perform, but that is a very, very substantial market for us.

But we have seen a very, very big reduction in the forecast of the image sensors for dental X-ray."

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Yole Developpement report "CMOS Camera Module Industry for Consumer & Automotive 2020" forecasts the revenue of the global camera module market to expand from $31.3B in 2019 to $57.0B in 2025, at 12.8% CAGR.

"Beyond the sensor itself, innovations in all the different subcomponents of the camera module are in high demand. The introduction of periscope lenses was a major event that allowed 5x or even 10x optical magnification within the existing thickness of mobile phones. Optical image stabilization (OIS) is another critical technology for photography especially for telephoto, hence players are also looking for innovations in this area, using new materials, MEMS or liquid lens to replace the Voice Coil Motor (VCM) approach.

Technical upgrades of camera modules include the “Active Alignment” process to align multiple cameras well. There will be several innovations in camera module integration, like pop-up cameras or side-up cameras, and under-screen cameras in future.

The industry leader LG Innotek continues to maintain its position due to the large orders from Apple. Closing in are Ofilm and Sunny Optical, who have climbed to the second and third positions by relying on the strong domestic market in China, replacing Semco and Foxconn/Sharp. In the years to come the US-China trade war could play a big role in reorganizing the ranking of Compact Camera Module (CCM) players."

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National Science Review paper "Networking retinomorphic sensor with memristive crossbar for brain-inspired visual perception" by Shuang Wang, Chen-Yu Wang, Pengfei Wang, Cong Wang, Zhu-An Li, Chen Pan, Yitong Dai, Anyuan Gao, Chuan Liu, Jian Liu, Huafeng Yang, Xiaowei Liu, Bin Cheng, Kunji Chen, Zhenlin Wang, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Shi-Jun Liang, and Feng Miao from Nanjing University, China, and National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, proposes a pixel array that can recognaze objects:

"Comparing to human vision, conventional machine vision composed of image sensor and processor suffers from high latency and large power consumption due to physically separated image sensing and processing. Neuromorphic vision system with brain-inspired visual perception provides a promising solution to solve the challenge. Here we propose and demonstrate a prototype neuromorphic vision system by networking retinomorphic sensor with a memristive crossbar. We fabricate the retinomorphic sensor by using WSe2/h-BN/Al2O3 van der Waals heterostructures with gate-tunable photoresponses, to closely mimic the human retinal capabilities in simultaneously sensing and processing images. We then network such sensor with a large-scale Pt/Ta/HfO2/Ta one-transistor-one-memristor (1T1R) memristive crossbar, which serves as the role similar to the visual cortex in human brain. The realized neuromorphic vision system allows for fast letter recognition and object tracking, indicating the capabilities of image sensing, processing and recognition in the full analog regime. Our work suggests that such neuromorphic vision system may open up unprecedented opportunities in future visual perception applications."

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Brookman has updated its ToF products page with a number of cameras based on BT008D sensor:




Brookman also congratulates Shizuoka University Prof. Shoji Kawahito, one of the founding members and a chairman of the company, with reception of the “Tamba Takayanagi Award/Achievement Award”. "This is the result of excellent achievements in the pioneering research on high performance and high functionality of image sensors, which the professor has been working on for a long time, and their practical application. Currently, CMOS image sensors continue to evolve from conventional 2D imaging to 3D sensing. We will continue to do our utmost to return the accumulated research results to society by continuing to challenge the possibilities of image sensing."

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Teledyne e2v introduces Hydra3D, an 832 x 600 pixel resolution ToF CMOS sensor. Hydra3D is based on a 10µm three-tap pixel.




Update: GlobeNewswire: Ha Lan Do Thu, Marketing Manager for 3D imaging at Teledyne e2v says, “We are very pleased to announce our newest Time-of-Flight sensor, the first multi-tap high resolution sensor in the market. Our partnership with Tower allows us to provide customers with the highest level of 3D performance, including uncompromised image quality in both 2D and 3D mode, in all operation conditions.”

Hydra3D comes with an evaluation kit (Hydra3D EK), enabling customers to evaluate the sensor in multiple application setups. The kit includes a compact 2/3-inch optical format calibrated module, which includes a light source for near infrared illumination and an optic. Two versions will be available targeted at performing the Time-of-Flight principle at short-range distances (up to 5 metres) or mid-range distances (up to 10 metres) and with a field-of-view of 60° x 45° or a field of view of 40° x 30°, while capturing real-time 3D information at a full resolution.

Rafael Romay, VP of Professional Imaging at Teledyne e2v, says: “The great technology innovation and partnership with Tower has been key in the development of this innovative new ToF image sensor, helping us to bring to market this best-in-class solution.”

Avi Strum, SVP and GM of Sensors and Display BU at Tower, added “We are very excited about the release of Hydra3D. Our strong partnership with Teledyne e2v goes back more than 15 years and many of their state-of-the-art products are manufactured by Tower. The Hydra3D ToF product is aligned well with Tower’s strategic investment in the ToF market. We look forward to many other Teledyne e2v products utilizing our world class CIS technology.”

Samples will be available in August 2020 and evaluation kits will be available in September 2020.

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