Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

ST publishes a walk-through video of its CES booth:

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

FLIR (former Point Grey) presents Sony Pregius S sensors for industrial applications:

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

BusinessWire: Cepton has raised over $50M in Series C funding. This brings Cepton’s total funding to nearly $100M. The latest funding round was led by Koito, the Tier 1 provider of automotive lighting systems, with an investment of $50M. Existing investors in Cepton also participated in this round. As part of the transaction, Koito will obtain non-exclusive rights to manufacture and sell Cepton’s lidar sensor design for an automotive application, using key components supplied by Cepton.

“With this latest investment round, the year 2020 is poised to be truly transformational for Cepton’s future, and we are excited to welcome Koito not just as an investor but also as a technology and manufacturing partner. Combining Koito’s world leadership in automotive lighting and their world-class quality, reliability and manufacturing with Cepton’s award-winning lidar solutions presents a tremendous opportunity to make deep inroads into the automotive market,” says Jun Pei, co-founder and CEO of Cepton.

BusinessWire: RoboSense has obtained the IATF 16949 certificate in the automotive field, which now fully qualifies it to supply to automotive customers. RoboSense’s LiDAR production line obtained the IATF 16949 Letter of Conformity in December, which has accelerated partnerships of automotive-grade LiDAR serial productions with major OEMs and Tier 1s.

LeiLei Shinohara, the Co-partner and VP of RoboSense, said, "IATF16949 requires extremely high production consistency, and emphasizes various product reliability metrics. It recognizes the RoboSense design, research and development, and production processes. It also indicates that RoboSense has achieved a new milestone of complete readiness for serial mass production of automotive LiDARs, including the latest solid-state smart LiDAR RS-LiDAR-M1.”


BusinessWire: Velodyne announces Mathew Rekow as its new CTO. Rekow assumes the CTO role following Anand Gopalan, who was recently named Velodyne’s CEO. Rekow was previously a Senior Director of Optical Engineering at Velodyne.

ArsTechnica posts an article "How lidar makers are coping with slow progress of self-driving tech" by Timothy Lee. Few quotes:

"At least one segment of the market—custom robots for warehouses, mines, and other industrial sites—is starting to buy lidar sensors in significant volume. Another segment—low-end lidars used in car driver-assistance systems—is poised to become a big market in the next couple of years.

In the next few years, we're going to see a number of carmakers make their first bulk lidar purchases—buying thousands of low-cost lidar sensors to improve their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

Experts believe lidar for the ADAS market needs to cost less than $500 for the economics to work. But if lidar companies can hit the right price level, the potential market is huge. By the middle of the decade, carmakers could be selling millions of lidar-equipped cars.

But the expected full-autonomy breakthroughs have been slow in coming. Companies that had aimed to launch self-driving taxi services in 2019, 2020, or 2021 have been forced to revise their timelines. And that has created a headache for lidar companies that were aiming to supply lidar sensors for fully autonomous vehicles.

Velodyne also faces competition from some Chinese companies that Velodyne dismisses as copycat vendors. Like Ouster, these companies offer Velodyne-like sensors at low prices. But Velodyne says that unlike Ouster, these companies simply copied Velodyne's design. Indeed, Velodyne sued two of those vendors—RoboSense and Hesai—for patent infringement last August."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Counterpoint Research forecasts a demand for embedded image sensors for passenger cars globally to double by 2023. The shipments of these image sensors will grow at a 19% CAGR, crossing 230 million units by 2023.

Commenting on these analyses, Aman Madhok, Senior Analyst for Smart Automotive stated, “Currently, most cars equipped with (rear) camera use it for basic parking visibility. However, this will begin to change as the industry moves towards the connected car era, with multiple sensors enabling increasing levels of safety and autonomy. Of all the sensors, the camera image sensor is one of the most important to enable greater Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) capabilities in the future.

With rear cameras for basic parking assistance in cars becoming almost a standard feature on newer models, we are now seeing the advent of a higher proportion of cars fitted with front-facing and side cameras to enable enhanced ADAS features. For example, surround view cameras, which are currently an option on higher-end models, will see significant adoption over the next five to six years. The key factors driving this trend are, firstly, government encouraging OEMs to integrate advanced safety features, and, secondly, growing awareness and preference for advanced safety features among customers.

Additionally, with declining ADAS costs, OEMs will look to incorporate features like Autonomous Emergency Braking as standard on mainstream models. And convenience applications like park-assist, are also expected to see fast growth during this period.”

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Journal of Applied Physics publishes a paper "Physics of trap assisted photomultiplication in vertical organic photoresistors" by Mehdi Daanoune, Raphaël Clerc, Bruno Flament, and Lionel Hirsch from Université de Lyon and Université Bordeaux, France.

"Several experimental groups have reported recently an intriguing high level of gain (Photomultiplication) in vertical organic photoresistance (as well as in other technologies, such as perovskite for instance). This mechanism is sometimes named as “Trap-Assisted Photomultiplication.” This paper investigates the origin of this mechanism by means of drift diffusion simulations, analytical theory, and experiments, considering the particular case of PCDTBT:PC60BM photoresistors, although some conclusions are likely to apply in other technologies. It turns out that an excess of charges (induced by electron–hole carrier generation) may trigger additional carrier injection, leading to photomultiplication, under specific circumstances. We call this mechanism “gain by injection enhancement.” Electron (respectively, hole) trapping for P only (respectively, N only) devices can play this role efficiently. As these additional carriers came from contacts, significant dark current injection is thus needed to achieve a large value of gain, explaining why this mechanism can occur only in P (or N) only photoresistors (and not photodiodes or intrinsic photoresistors, i.e., with midgap contacts). In such devices, however, the detectivity remains intrinsically limited by the high level of dark injection currents required to get gain, and consequently, this type of device may be interesting, in particular, in technologies where it is not possible to achieve low dark currents using photodiodes. However, penalized by the slow trap dynamics, the cut-off frequency of these devices remains extremely low (less than 100 Hz). Also, this gain takes a high value only at low irradiance, making photoresistor responsivity light dependent. All these results bring new light in analyzing and optimizing photoresistors, opening a large field of investigation to take advantage of gain by injection enhancement."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Ben Gurion University, Israel, research by Ben Nassi, Dudi Nassi, Raz Ben Netanel, Yisroel Mirsky, Green, and Yuval Elovici "Phantom Attacks Against Advanced Driving Assistance Systems" shows how projected images can change behavior of camera-based ADAS systems, such as Tesla X Autopilot or Mobileye 630 Pro:

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Dutch site LetsGoDigital publishes Samsung trademark filing for "Nonacell" name. "Nona" stands for 9 in Latin. That creates a speculation that the new trademark will be used for 3x3 CFA merging 9 small pixels into a large one. That way, a 108MP "Nonacell" sensor can take 12MP Bayer pictures.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Digitimes reports that "OmniVision, in cooperation with TSMC, will soon launch SiGe ToF light sensors seeking to cut into the supply chains of first-tier Chinese handset vendors, the sources said." Possibly, the sources meant Artilux-TSMC-Omnivision collaboration announced few weeks ago.

According to Digitimes sources, ToF cameras "will be mass-adopted by handset makers in the second half of 2020."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

IFNews publishes Credit Suisse report "China Technology Sector, Hardware outlook 2020: Stay invested for 5G ramp-up." The analysts coin a new term HOVX standing for Huawei-Oppo-Vivo-Xiaomi, the leading brands in China.

"Multi-cam still a clear trend: With higher data bandwidth and traffic, photo/video sharing demand will drive the upgrade of higher solution better optical performance in camera. Penetration of triple+ camera will further increase. The new iPhone may adopt ToF for a 3D camera feature which will drive the adoption of ToF in the Android camp as well.

3D-sensing: We see 3D sensing is gaining popularity among Chinese smartphones, driven by Huawei Mate 20 series in 3Q18, and we see an increasing trend of ToF adoption among flagship Android smartphone models such as Mate 30 Pro, Honor V20, and even Galaxy Note 10+, whose share is getting close to SL 3D-sensing solutions. Our Taiwan tech analyst estimates 20 mn/25 mn units of Android Face ID shipment and 20 mn/100 mn units of ToF camera in 2019/20E, respectively."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Physics World publishes an article "Transparent graphene photodetectors make advanced 3D camera" that proposes to use a set of sensors for depth perception:

A team of researchers led by Zhaohui Zhong, Jeffrey Fessler and Theodore Norris from the University of Michigan built a 3D camera that uses a stack of transparent sensors made from graphene to simultaneously capture images that are focused to different distances from the camera lens.

The researchers fabricated their photodetector on a transparent glass substrate using graphene as the light-sensing layer, the conducting channel layer, the gate layer and even the interconnects. Using graphene for all the different functional components of the device in this way allows for sensitive light detection and a transparency of around 95%.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Nature publishes a paper "CMOS-based bio-image sensor spatially resolves neural activity-dependent proton dynamics in the living brain" by Hiroshi Horiuchi, Masakazu Agetsuma, Junko Ishida, Yusuke Nakamura, Dennis Lawrence Cheung, Shin Nanasaki, Yasuyuki Kimura, Tatsuya Iwata, Kazuhiro Takahashi, Kazuaki Sawada, and Junichi Nabekura from National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Okazaki, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Hayama, and Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan.

"Recent studies have shown that protons can function as neurotransmitters in cultured neurons. To further investigate regional and neural activity-dependent proton dynamics in the brain, the development of a device with both wide-area detectability and high spatial-ltemporal resolution is necessary. Therefore, we develop an image sensor with a high spatial-temporal resolution specifically designed for measuring protons in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that spatially deferent neural stimulation by visual stimulation induced distinct patterns of proton changes in the visual cortex. This result indicates that our biosensor can detect micrometer and millisecond scale changes of protons across a wide area. Our study demonstrates that a CMOS-based proton image sensor with high spatial and temporal precision can be used to detect pH changes associated with biological events. We believe that our sensor may have broad applicability in future biological studies."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

SeekingAlpha transcript of ON Semi Q4 earnings call updates on the company's CIS business:

"An emerging area of growth for our industrial business is e-commerce. We have built a strong design win pipeline for our CMOS image sensors for warehouse automation and delivery robots. We are engaged with the leading e-commerce retailers on many programs, and we expect strong contribution from this segment of the industrial market.

During the fourth quarter of 2019, we secured design wins for key platforms for ADAS and incabin viewing applications. Our design funnel for ADAS continues to expand at a robust pace. As we noted in our previous earnings call, we have won 16 of the 17 two-megapixel and eight-megapixel platforms awarded in 2019 for level-2 and level-3 vehicles.

Our LiDAR and radar products are gaining strong traction, and our design funnel for these products continues to expand at a rapid pace. We believe that we are enabling democratization of LiDAR with a solid-state solution, which is a fraction of cost of other existing solutions. Our low cost advantage is enabled by a CMOS based architecture as opposed to that based on exotic materials. Based on our design win pipeline, we expect to have leading share with top five global LiDAR module makers."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

R.Matthews, N.Falkner, and M.Sorella from The University of Adelaide, Australia publish an updated version of their paper "Reverse engineering the Raspberry Pi Camera V2: A study of pixel non-uniformity using a scanning electron microscope."

"In this paper we reverse engineer the Sony IMX219PQ image sensor, otherwise known as the Raspberry Pi Camera v2.0. We provide a visual reference for pixel non-uniformity by analysing variations in transistor length, microlens optic system and in the photodiode. We use these measurements to demonstrate irregularities at the microscopic level and link this to the signal variation measured as pixel non-uniformity used for unique identification of discrete image sensors."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Broadcom Industrial Fiber Products Division (IFPD) announces new silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) devices for automotive and industrial LiDAR applications. Broadcom’s latest NIR SiPM solutions address various challenges, such as range limitations and multi-target resolution. The underlying NIR SiPM technology is said to deliver an unprecedented performance by combining a high photon detection efficiency (PDE) of 18 percent at 905 nm with a recharge time of 10 ns. HDR is achieved with the smallest cell size, while a low dark count rate (DCR), low crosstalk and after-pulsing probability make Broadcom’s NIR SiPM good fit for LiDAR applications.

Broadcom NIR SiPM highlights:

• PDE at 905 nm: 18%
• Recharge time constant: < 10 ns
• Single photon time resolution: 500 ps
• Smallest cell size
• DCR: 600 kHz/mm2
• Direct crosstalk: < 20%
• Samples available

“Broadcom IFPD successfully released NUV-HD products to the market two years ago. Now that our key SiPM milestones have been reached, we are excited to announce our new cutting-edge NIR solutions for LiDAR applications. The very high PDE, small cell size and low recharge time are critical to enabling mass market adoption of LiDAR. With a long-established history of developing and supplying automotive-grade and industrial fiber optic solutions, Broadcom is well positioned to address the growing demand of high performing LiDAR sensors for the automotive and industrial markets,” said Martin Weigert, VP and GM of Broadcom IFPD.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Vision Research-Ametek announces the Phantom VEO 1310 equipped with a new proprietary 1.2MP CMOS sensor with 2.5X higher light sensitivity than previous VEO models. It achieves recording speeds over 10,800 fps at full 1.2MP resolution and higher rates at reduced resolutions. It has a native ISO of 25,000 (monochrome).

Key Specifications of the Phantom VEO 1310:

• 10,860 fps at 1280 x 960 resolution
• Increased frame rates at reduced resolution, for example:
  14,350 fps at 1280 x 720
  30,030 fps at 640 x 480 standard or 40,300 fps with binning enabled
• Max frame rate is 423,350 fps at 320 x 24
• Native ISO (12232 STD)—25,000 D (mono) and 6,400 D (color)

The Phantom VEO 1310 captures an ignition test via schlieren imaging:

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Sony reports its quarterly results for the quarter ended on Dec. 31, 2019. The company says:

• FY19 Q3 sales increased 29% year-on-year to 298.0 billion yen primarily due to an improvement in product mix and an increase in unit sales of image sensors for mobile devices.
• Operating income increased 28.7 billion yen year-on-year to 75.2 billion yen primarily due to the impact of the increase in sales, partially offset by an increase in research and development costs and depreciation expense.
• We revised upward our FY19 sales forecast 50 billion yen to 1 trillion 90 billion yen and our operating income forecast 30 billion yen to 230 billion yen.
• Demand for our image sensors in Q4 continues to be strong.
• Although production capacity is expanding according to plan and we continue to operate at full production capacity utilization, sales are increasing due to strong nearterm demand, and that is preventing us from stockpiling strategic inventory as originally planned.
• In addition, partly due to the introduction of a highly competitive new product this fiscal year, we have been able to maintain our overall margin, all of which has enabled us to operate this business extremely well.
• There is no change to our view that demand will continue to increase over the mid- to long-term from next fiscal year, but, in regards to next fiscal year in particular, we cannot be too optimistic due to the impact of the spread of infection from the new coronavirus that I mentioned earlier, the competitive environment and various geopolitical risks.
• We will continue to closely monitor demand trends and the external environment as we manage this business going forward.
• ToF sensors, which we expect will be the next growth driver after image sensors, have begun to sell well, although their size within the overall business is still small.
• We expect their adoption, primarily in mobile devices, to increase further from next fiscal year.
• Taking a longer-term view, as we made a point of showcasing at CES last month, we are taking steps to expand the adoption of Sony’s imaging and sensing technology in the mobility space and in the diverse industrial and factory automation space.
• We plan to proactively invest even more in technology development to grow this business in the future, such as the hiring of personnel including algorithm and software engineers, and the building of an office in Osaka to serve as a design and development center for image sensors.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

BAE Fairchild Imaging presents a new ultra low light HWK4123 sensor featuring a BSI sCMOS 3.0 technology. It is said to have "advanced the state-of-the-art in low light imaging by lowering the read noise to 0.5 electrons while improving the broad-spectrum quantum efficiency." The 4/3” 9MP HWK4123 enables night vision and surveillance cameras to image at less than 0.001 Lux (starlight). The HWK4123 is sampling now.


Thanks to RP for the info!

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

SK Hynix publishes an article "Evolution of Pixel Technology in CMOS Image Sensor" by Hoon Sang Oh, Fellow of CIS Business at SK Hynix.

"SK hynix started its CIS business in 2007 and has produced 8-inch wafer-based image sensor products for more than a decade. With the advent of IoT and 5G-based ICT world, the image sensor market is growing rapidly today, and SK hynix is fostering the CIS business as the next growth engine beyond its memory business in order to meet this soaring demand. After a couple of years of preparation for the 12-inch fab CIS process, SK hynix launched a 12-inch wafer-based 1.0um product in 2019, which adopted its proprietary Black Pearl pixel technology and received good reviews from customers due to the highly competitive pixel performance. Black Pearl boasts improved noise characteristics, implementing clear images with little noise under low illumination conditions.

SK hynix is now expanding its CIS product portfolio spectrum from mid-end to high-end products based on both performance and price competitiveness. Through its investment in the CIS space in 2020 and beyond, the company aims to quickly become one of the world’s leading CIS companies."




Update: In another PR, SK Hynix reports that it has opened CIS R&D center in Tokyo, Japan, on Sept. 1, 2019:

"By establishing the JRC in the heart of the world’s image sensor innovation, SK hynix aims to secure the excellent CIS talent and to further strengthen its technological prowess through the creation of a global network.

Japan is home to numerous small and large image sensor manufacturers, with Sony being one of the largest. According to IHS Markit, a leading market research institution, Sony now leads the image sensor market with its 51.1% market share achieved in the first quarter of 2019.

The country is also seeing companies from overseas, such as China, bolstering their research and development by establishing research centers in Japan. “The significance of SK hynix opening up the JRC in Japan cannot be understated. The new facility will give the company ultimate access to the diverse CIS resources concentrated in Japan,” said [Shimura Masayuki, the Head of the Hynix JRC.] “This extends to joint research and development with leading Japanese universities, which is expected to contribute to various aspects of our CIS business, including the successful development of a new CIS technology.”

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Oryx Vision LiDAR startup raised $67M but closed its operations on summer 2019 and returned the remaining $40M back to investors. In a Youtube lecture, the company co-founder and former VP R&D David Ben-Bassat presents the company's technology and achievements (in Hebrew):

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Optasensor GmbH, a recently founded German company with expertise in the field of photonics integration, design and manufacturing of specially tailored small factor visualization and sensing solutions announces Osiris Micro Camera Module Series, a camera module with 1mm x 1mm footprint, customized wafer level optics, including NIR Cut filter allowing easy vision integration into constrained spaces.


Being an independent Optics and Sensor Module design and manufacturing company it offers Osiris Micro camera module adaptions, using customized and standard CMOS image sensors from worldwide manufacturers. The Camera Module integrates tailor made optical elements allowing endoscope specific oriented solutions, including customised wafer level or single replicated (allowing miniature lensing down to 500um diameter) optics, filters and prisms for light shaping as well as the possibility of integration of miniature illumination solutions.


The founders are pioneers in developing and producing Microcameras in high volume for disposable endoscope market worldwide, with the former company Awaiba. OptaSensor GmbH thus draw on more than a decade of knowledge on miniature fully enclosed camera systems modules, with a focus on the medical market.

The company will exhibit Osiris MCM Series on the coming SPIE Photonics West trade show in San Francisco as well on MD&M trade show in Anaheim.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

PRNewswire: Gigajot has been awarded a NASA Phase II SBIR project to develop a UV/EUV photon number resolving image sensor based on the QIS technology.

The QIS is a platform technology and can be used in a wide range of imaging and photonics applications ranging from consumer to high-end (e.g. scientific). It provides excellent photon-counting capability, low dark current, high resolution, and high-speed operation. Also, QIS is compatible with the mainstream CMOS image sensor processes. The QIS devices can be designed and implemented in different formats (from a few pixels to hundreds of megapixels), different pixel sizes (from sub-micron to more than ten microns), and different spectral sensitivity (UV-VIS-NIR).

In this project, Gigajot will deliver a novel platform photon-counting image sensor technology, QIS, for future NASA mission concept studies as well as other scientific and consumer applications. The outcome of this project will be a large-format visible-blind CMOS UV/EUV photon-counting sensor with accurate photon-counting capability. The novel sensor will provide several features and capabilities that are not available with other high-sensitivity detectors, these features include: accurate photon-number-resolving, zero dead time, low voltage and power requirements, high spatial resolution, and room temperature operation, among others.

Jiaju Ma, the project's principal investigator and the CTO of Gigajot, noted, "Enabled by our patented innovations, the novel image sensor will combine a linear multi-bit photon-counting response in each detection cycle, zero dead time, low dark current, low operating voltage, the capability of room temperature operation, and strong radiation hardness. When combined with the existing advanced back-surface passivation techniques and band-pass filters, it can produce accurate visible-blind UV/EUV photon-counting with high quantum efficiency."

"Besides scientific applications, there are also sizeable markets for the proposed technology in automotive, medical, industrial, defense, and security applications." Said Gigajot's President & CEO, Saleh Masoodian, "A large-format UV/EUV CMOS photon-counting sensor can potentially have numerous applications in these markets. For example, UV imaging is used in dermatology to identify and visualize epidermal dermatologic conditions. With the high spatial resolution and single-photon sensitivity provided by Gigajot innovative imaging technologies, the details and features of the subcutaneous skin can be more accurately visualized. The reflected-UV imaging is also widely used to detect scratches and digs on the optical surfaces. For instance, the semiconductor industry uses UV imaging to perform an automated inspection on the photomasks. This inspection needs sensors with ultra-high spatial resolution and large format to quickly scan a large area and detect defects with submicron size. Gigajot is looking for partners interested in specific applications for this new imaging technology."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Imec presents a number of new hyperspectral cameras. The SWIR one is based on a new InGaAs sensor:

"Compared to VNIR-range based systems, SWIR-based hyperspectral imaging solutions capture more of the molecular structure of the screened objects (like moisture, lipid, protein contents) and allow for high added value distinctive material analysis. This widens the application potential in domains such as recycling, food sorting and quality grading, security & surveillance solution, etc."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Gpixel announces PulSar (PS) technology, extending the range of all GSENSE BSI sensors to detect vacuum UV (VUV) light, extreme UV (EUV) light and soft x-ray photons with QE approaching 100%. In addition, the technology demonstrates a good resistance to radiation damage in soft x-ray detection applications.

Gpixel’s new PulSar (PS) technology eliminates the AR coating on the BSI sensor surface and incorporates a new passivation technique to reduce the thickness of the non-sensitive layer at the sensor surface, reducing the dark current, and boosting the resistance to radiation damage.

“Gpixel is very proud to offer our new technology to address the needs of our scientific customers,” says Wim Wuyts, CCO of Gpixel. “We are excited to have the opportunity to make this technology available across our broad range of large format BSI image sensors, offering our customers the unique combination of VUV/EUV and soft x-ray imaging options using our standard scientific CMOS GSENSE product family. PulSar (PS) variants are electronically compatible with their corresponding standard BSI sensors, allowing customers to quickly and easily accommodate the new sensors in existing designs.”

Prototype samples of the GSENSE2020BSI-PS are available now for evaluation, and GSENSE400BSI-PS samples will be available in mid 2020. Other variants available upon request.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

MDPI paper "Fully Depleted, Trench-Pinned Photo Gate for CMOS Image Sensor Applications" by Francois Roy, Andrej Suler, Thomas Dalleau, Romain Duru, Daniel Benoit, Jihane Arnaud, Yvon Cazaux, Catherine Chaton, Laurent Montes, Panagiota Morfouli, and Guo-Neng Lu from ST Micro, IMEP-LaHC, LETI-CEA, and University Lyon is a part of Special issue on the 2019 International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW2019). The paper proposes a solution of quite an important issue associated with deep high energy implants:

"Tackling issues of implantation-caused defects and contamination, this paper presents a new complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor (CIS) pixel design concept based on a native epitaxial layer for photon detection, charge storage, and charge transfer to the sensing node. To prove this concept, a backside illumination (BSI), p-type, 2-µm-pitch pixel was designed. It integrates a vertical pinned photo gate (PPG), a buried vertical transfer gate (TG), sidewall capacitive deep trench isolation (CDTI), and backside oxide–nitride–oxide (ONO) stack. The designed pixel was fabricated with variations of key parameters for optimization. Testing results showed the following achievements: 13,000 h+ full-well capacity with no lag for charge transfer, 80% quantum efficiency (QE) at 550-nm wavelength, 5 h+/s dark current at 60 °C, 2 h+ temporal noise floor, and 75 dB dynamic range. In comparison with conventional pixel design, the proposed concept could improve CIS performance."

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Johannes Solhusvik becomes the Head of Automotive Design Centre at Sony Europe B.V. In the past, Johannes used to be BU-CTO of Aptina’s Automotive and Industrial Business Unit. Later, he was Omnivision's GM of Europe Design Center located in Norway. Now, one can expect a big boost of Sony automotive image sensor business in Europe.

Go to the original article...

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Teledyne e2v releases a first of a few publications on the 50th Anniversary of the invention of CCD. These publications is aimed to highlight e2v's long term commitment to CCD design and fabrication in the UK, for space, science, astronomy and other demanding applications:

"Teledyne e2v’s CCD fabrication facility is critical to the success and quality of future space science missions and remains committed to being the long-term supplier of high specification and quality devices for the world’s major space agencies and scientific instruments producers."

Go to the original article...