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PerceptionCoreVision publishes a transcript of Galaxycore CEO Zhao Lixin (Stanly Zhao) talk at the 2nd Shanghai Free Trade Zone Lingang New Area Semiconductor Industry Development Forum held on September 15, 2021. Few quotes:

"China has a lot to do in the development of image sensors. From the perspective of sales volume, Galaxycore plus Omnivision's CIS shipments account for more than 50% of the world; from the perspective of value, Gekewei’s 1 billion plus Howe 2 billion, accounting for about 16% of the global 20 billion CIS market.

I often proudly say that our Galaxycore is good. Why is Galaxycore good? We, Galaxycore, were the largest domestic customer of SMIC, the largest foundry in China in 2007. During the financial crisis in 2008, we placed an order of 100,000 8-inch wafers for SMIC. Of course, we were surpassed by HiSilicon, because HiSilicon was too powerful.

Before that, Galxycore has been the top four customers of SMIC, and we are also the major customers of packaging factories such as Changjiang Electronics, Jingfang and Huatian. Therefore, only after you have a large scale can you promote the national economy and support the development of this industry. Therefore, I put a lot of emphasis on the shipment volume of a wafer, the Internet emphasizes traffic, and semiconductor companies must emphasize the use of silicon wafers. Galaxycore currently ranks among the top three in terms of silicon wafer usage in China.

The second is to focus on high-end, because only ICs on high-end brand mobile phones have sufficient scale and profits. Without profit, there is no way to do high-end R&D. Therefore, to drive the development of the entire industry chain in China, there must be sufficient profits. Just like a company like Huawei, its high-end mobile phone camera supports three world-renowned companies, Sony, Largan and Sunny. So it can feed so many people with a single chip. But if you can't do high-end, it is unlikely to be profitable.

The development of China's semiconductor industry still requires the use of mobile phones to drive our chip design companies. Design companies drive Foundry factories, packaging factories, and then equipment manufacturers and material manufacturers.

Why can Galaxycore do well? Because Galaxycore is unique in process research and development. Therefore, in order to speed up the research and development of high-end products, we must build our own factories to do the research and development of special processes. Now Lingang is a very good place, so we invested 2.2 billion US dollars in Lingang to build a world's most advanced characteristic process line.

Based on this sales data of Galaxycore, I will tell you about our development history. You can see that from 2006 to 2007, it was the research and development period. In 2008, a large number of shipments were made. In 2009, despite the financial crisis, our business doubled.

In 2014, we made about 340 million U.S. dollars. At this time, we were stuck overseas because we couldn't make BSI crafts. Because the neck of BSI was stuck, we couldn't make high-end products. Then we will cooperate with Samsung around 2016 and 2017 to make our BSI products. At this time, the company's performance is developing by leaps and bounds. Last year we approached 1 billion US dollars.

When there is a breakthrough in research and development, this performance is relatively easy to grow rapidly, and the shipment volume is also amazing. We have achieved shipments of nearly 2.4 billion units. With this scale, we will be able to do more high-end designs later."

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Samsung publishes a promotional video about its 200MP HP1 sensor:

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Seoul National University of Science and Technology publishes a MDPI paper "Reduction of Fluorine Diffusion and Improvement of Dark Current Using Carbon Implantation in CMOS Image Sensor" by Su-Young and Sung-Hoon Choa.

"Recently, the demand of a high resolution complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor is dramatically increasing. As the pixel size reduces to submicron, however, the quality of the sensor image decreases. In particular, the dark current can act as a large noise source resulting in reduction of the quality of the sensor image. Fluorine ion implantation was commonly used to improve the dark current by reducing the trap state density. However, the implanted fluorine diffused to the outside of the silicon surface and disappeared after annealing process. In this paper, we analyzed the effects of carbon implantation on the fluorine diffusion and the dark current characteristics of the CMOS image sensor. As the carbon was implanted with dose of 5.0 × 10^14 and 1 × 10^15 ions/cm2 in N+ area of FD region, the retained dose of fluorine was improved by more than 131% and 242%, respectively than no carbon implantation indicating that the higher concentration of the carbon implantation, the higher the retained dose of fluorine after annealing. As the retained fluorine concentration increased, the minority carriers of electrons or holes decreased by more Si-F bond formation, resulting in increasing the sheet resistance. When carbon was implanted with 1.0 × 10^15 ions/cm2, the defective pixel, dark current, transient noise, and flicker were much improved by 25%, 9.4%, 1%, and 28%, respectively compared to no carbon implantation. Therefore, the diffusion of fluorine after annealing could be improved by the carbon implantation leading to improvement of the dark current characteristics."

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Seoul National University of Science and Technology publishes a MDPI paper "Reduction of Fluorine Diffusion and Improvement of Dark Current Using Carbon Implantation in CMOS Image Sensor" by Su-Young and Sung-Hoon Choa.

"Recently, the demand of a high resolution complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor is dramatically increasing. As the pixel size reduces to submicron, however, the quality of the sensor image decreases. In particular, the dark current can act as a large noise source resulting in reduction of the quality of the sensor image. Fluorine ion implantation was commonly used to improve the dark current by reducing the trap state density. However, the implanted fluorine diffused to the outside of the silicon surface and disappeared after annealing process. In this paper, we analyzed the effects of carbon implantation on the fluorine diffusion and the dark current characteristics of the CMOS image sensor. As the carbon was implanted with dose of 5.0 × 10^14 and 1 × 10^15 ions/cm2 in N+ area of FD region, the retained dose of fluorine was improved by more than 131% and 242%, respectively than no carbon implantation indicating that the higher concentration of the carbon implantation, the higher the retained dose of fluorine after annealing. As the retained fluorine concentration increased, the minority carriers of electrons or holes decreased by more Si-F bond formation, resulting in increasing the sheet resistance. When carbon was implanted with 1.0 × 10^15 ions/cm2, the defective pixel, dark current, transient noise, and flicker were much improved by 25%, 9.4%, 1%, and 28%, respectively compared to no carbon implantation. Therefore, the diffusion of fluorine after annealing could be improved by the carbon implantation leading to improvement of the dark current characteristics."

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"4.6μm Low Power Indirect Time-of-Flight Pixel Achieving 88.5% Demodulation Contrast at 200MHz for 0.54MPix Depth Camera"

by Cedric Tubert, Pascal Mellot, Yann Desprez, Céline Mas, Arnaud Authié, Laurent Simony, Grégory Bochet, Stephane Drouard, Jeremie Teyssier, Damien Miclo, Jean-Raphael Bezal, Thibault Augey, Franck Hingant, Thomas Bouchet, Blandine Roig, Aurélien Mazard, Raoul Vergara, Gabriel Mugny, Arnaud Tournier, Frédéric Lalanne, Francois Roy, Boris Rodrigues Goncalves, Matteo Vignetti, Pascal Fonteneau, Vincent Farys, Francois Agut, Joao Miguel Melo Santos, David Hadden, Kevin Channon, Christopher Townsend, Bruce Rae, and Sara Pellegrini.

"In this paper, a 4.3e- RMS low noise 4.6μm Time-of-Flight pixel based on charge domain with kTC noise removal is proposed to enhance the depth camera image quality. The pixel takes advantages of 6μm gradually doped epitaxial layer for 88.5% demodulation contrast at 200MHz and 18.5% QE at 940nm. Buried channel transfer gates are used to enable low capacitive switching and allowing best-in-class 1.4μW/pixel power consumption at 200MHz. The pixel is fully isolated due to deep trench isolation and pixel bulk is biased at several hundreds of mV for ultimate low power Time-of-Flight sensor and system. The paper describes the design of 0.54Mpix camera (672 x 804 pixels) implementing demodulation circuits robust against EMI and multi-devices interferences. The performance of an indirect Time-of-Flight system is demonstrated with 1.0% depth noise under 40kLux at 30fps."

ST kindly sent me a few slides from the presentation:

Other ESSCIRC imaging papers are:

• "Advancements in Indirect Time of Flight Image Sensors in Front Side Illuminated CMOS"
  Markus Dielacher, Martin Flatscher, Reinhard Gabl, Richard Gaggl, Dirk Offenberg, and Jens Prima from Infineon and PMD
  "We will present major advances in Time of Flight image sensors for consumer applications. Several innovative elements integrated into a 130nm front side illumination CMOS node reveal superior sensor performance so far only attributed to much more complex backside illumination technologies. The gate controlled pixels comprising deep trenches, buried mirrors and integrated prisms, reveal high quantum efficiency and modulation transfer function close to the physical pixel size. In-pixel common mode suppression prevents saturation even under backlight conditions. The comprehensive System on Chip integrates high speed ADCs, a flexible phase shifter, as well as current monitoring for laser safety."

• "Dark Count Rate in Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes: Characterization and Modeling Study"
  Mathieu Sicre, Megan Agnew, Christel Buj, Jean Coignus, Dominik Golanski, Rémi Helleboid, Bastien Mamdy, Isobel Nicholson, Sara Pellegrini, Denis Rideau, David Roy, and Francis Calmon from CEA-Leti, INSA Lyon, STMicroelectronics.
  "Dark Count Rate (DCR) in Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD) in Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor technology is characterized and analyzed with a comprehensive simulation methodology. Based on a series of measurements of SPAD with various architectures, on an extended range of voltages and temperatures, the DCR measurements are correlated to the spatial localization of traps within the device and their parameters. To this aim, process and electrical simulations using Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) tools are combined with an in-house McIntyre solver to compute the breakdown probability (Pt). The traps are accounted for using thermal SRH carrier generation-recombination mechanism which is coupled with the position-dependent breakdown probability. This rigorous methodology makes it possible to directly compare with DCR measurements, since only generated carriers with a non-negligible avalanche probability are considered."

• "A High-Speed Low-Power Sun Sensor with Solar Cells and Continuous Operation"
  Rubén Gómez-Merchán, María López-Carmona, Juan Antonio Leñero-Bardallo, Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez from Universidad de Sevilla-IMSE-CNM CSIC, Spain.
  "A novel sun sensor concept is presented. Photodiodes operating as solar cells with continuous operation and dedicated logic to calculate the centroid position are integrated to achieve lower latency and energy consumption. The output data flow is remarkably reduced because the centroid of the illuminated pixels is the only sensor output data. It overcomes conventional digital sun sensors based on Active Pixel Sensor (APS) pixels and Address Event Representation (AER) in terms of latency and power consumption. Its latency is in the order of microseconds with an average power consumption lower than 100 uW. Experimental results are provided and benchmarked."

• "A 0.94-μVrms Input Noise Pixel-Level Continuous Time ΣΔ IADC Interface for THz Sensing"
  Gabriele Quarta, Matteo Perenzoni, Stefano D'Amico from Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Università Del Salento, Italy
  "The goal of this work is the design, realization, and characterization of a pixel-level front-end in 0.15μm CMOS technology, that allows to directly convert in the digital domain the weak output signal from the Field-Effect Transistor (FET) TeraHertz (THz) detector, in a noise-efficient way. The chosen architecture is a Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta Incremental Analog-to-Digital Converter (CT ΣΔ IADC) with a current DAC feedback, chopper technique and digital lock-in modulation. The measured SNR of this interface is 67.45dB, corresponding to an equivalent number of bit (ENOB) of 10.91. The pixel readout area is 0.072mm2, and the power consumption is 65μW from 1.8V supply. The Noise Equivalent Power (NEP) of the THz detector and readout chain is 268pW/√𝐇𝐳. The readout channel Input Referred Noise (IRN) is 1.2μVrms with the FET, and 0.94μVrms for the channel without detector.

• "The Essential Contribution of CMOS Imaging Technologies to Earth Observation Applications"
  Pierre Magnan, ISAE-SUPAERO, France
  "In this paper we discuss how the high performances CMOS imaging process improvements, strongly driven by consumer market’s needs, has allowed this technologies to pop-up in the field of Earth Observation instruments traditionally making use of dedicated Charge Coupled Devices (CCD). After reviewing the various Earth image captures techniques and related sensor architectures, the specific requirements on the sensor process will be examined and it will be shown how modern CMOS imaging process, although developed initially for high volume small pixel pitch application, can efficiently fulfill these needs, even allow new performances level, and thanks to additional features enable new achievements particularly suited to the New Space context."

• "Luximos: a 768x64 900-fps Tileable Pipelined X-Ray CMOS Image Sensor for Dental Imaging with 2.6 LSB/nGy Sensitivity"
  Nicola Massari, Xu Hesong, Alessandro Tarolli, Luca Parmesan, Daniele Perenzoni, Sabrina Colpo, Nicola Fronza, David Stoppa, Matteo Perenzoni, Alfredo Maglione from AdvanSid, FBK, and AMS

• "Comprehensive Modeling and Characterization of Photon Detection Efficiency and Jitter in Advanced SPAD Devices"
  Rémi Helleboid, Denis Rideau, Isobel Nicholson, Norbert Moussy, Olivier Saxod, Marie Basset, Jérémy Grebot, Antonin Zimmerman, Bastien Mamdy, Dominik Golanski, Megan Agnew, Sara Pellegrini, and Mathieu Sicre from CEA-Leti, STMicroelectronics, INRIA

• "High Tuning Range Spiking 1R-1T VO2 Voltage-Controlled Oscillator for Integrated RF and Optical Sensing"
  Teodor Rosca, Fatemeh Qaderi, and Adrian Mihai Ionescu from EPFL
  "In this work we propose and experimentally validate a relaxation oscillator architecture with ultra-high tuning range (higher than 400%, from 5KHz to more than 25kHz when the control voltage is varied from 2.5 to 5V) that exploits the reversible metal-insulator transition in 2-terminal Vanadium Dioxide thin film devices loaded to a MOSFET common source amplifier. We propose and validate an analytical model that connects key output signal metrics to the intrinsic properties of the phase-change VO2 device employed. In addition, we demonstrate RF and optical sensing capabilities, with sensitivities of 4.64 Hz/dBm and 4.23 Hz/mW to RF and Optical Power, respectively."

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Laoyaoba, EET-China, Sohu: Silicon Integrated, also known as Wuhan Juxin Microelectronics and Polycore Microelectronics, presents SIF2610, a VGA iToF sensor based on 5um BSI pixel. This is the company's 2nd generation product with improved resolution, depth accuracy, and ambient light tolerance. Silicon Integrated emphasizes that the sensor is based on its own self-developed IP and know-how accumulated over the years of ToF experience.

"As ToF products with VGA-level resolution have gradually become the security standard for face payment, PolyCore has brought SIF2610, an excellent performance iToF product, to the industry, which will provide services such as 3D face recognition, smart door locks, interactive perception, Applications such as VSLAM have brought a better user experience," Juxin Microelectronics co-founder and CMO Kong Fanxiao said. "We will also launch high-resolution dToF products based on the 3D stacking process within this year to help the application of 3D sensing in AR/VR and automotive lidar applications."

In August 2021, Silicon Integrated completed a series C financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. It includes a strategic investment from the three major mobile phone brands.

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"The measurement of transient optical fields has proven critical to understanding the dynamical mechanisms underlying ultrafast physical and chemical phenomena, and is key to realizing higher speeds in electronics and telecommunications. Complete characterization of optical waveforms, however, requires an optical oscilloscope capable of resolving the electric field oscillations with sub-femtosecond resolution and with single-shot operation. Here, we show that strong-field nonlinear excitation of photocurrents in a silicon-based image sensor chip can provide the sub-cycle optical gate necessary to characterize carrier-envelope phase-stable optical waveforms in the mid-infrared. By mapping the temporal delay between an intense excitation and weak perturbing pulse onto a transverse spatial coordinate of the image sensor, we show that the technique allows single-shot measurement of few-cycle waveforms."

The measurements setup uses a Thorlabs DCC1545M camera based on 8b 1.3MP CMOS sensor with fairly modest spec. At least, some of the nice things do not require high performing sensors:

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Actlight shows its DPD-based in proximity sensor demo:

EPIC publishes a FMCW LiDAR session with presentations of Insight Lidar, Ommatidia, LIGENTEC, Imec, Scantinel, Denselight, and SiLC:

Omnivision promotes its 2MP, 1.1um pixel OV02C, said to be the smallest 1080p sensor in the industry:

Omron publishes use cases for its cheap microbolometric thermopile pixel sensor (1, 2):

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GlobeNewswire: Teledyne e2v introduces its Topaz series of industrial CMOS sensors with new 2MP and 1.5MP resolution devices. These 1920 x 1080 and 1920 x 800-pixel format sensors feature 2.5um low noise, global-shutter pixel and housed in a tiny 4.45 mm wide CSP.

Gareth Powell, Marketing Manager for CMOS Sensors at Teledyne e2v said, “Modern logistics, retail, and manufacturing applications all require enhanced productivity and throughput, with longer working ranges. The new Topaz sensors were developed with this in mind, offering an excellent cost/performance ratio for high volume adoption. They also have a tiny footprint making them ideal to drive the world’s smallest barcode OEM engines and thinnest mobile platforms.”

Samples and evaluation kits are available now.

Key Features

• Advanced 2.5µm x 2.5µm global shutter pixel
• Low readout noise of 3.3e- (typ)
• Low dark signal for good high temp performance
• Frame rate of >100 fps in 8 bit output mode
• 2 lane MIPI outputs (1.2Gpix/sec each) 
• Fast Wake Up mode – decode within 10ms after power up and other useful application features

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2021 International Image Sensor Workshop website goes on-air. The registered users can start drinking from the firehose of 87 image sensor regular papers, flash papers, and invited presentations, including videos. The Q&A sessions are to start next Monday. The registration is open till then and costs only $100.

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SmartSens releases the 1/3-inch, 2MP SC2336 and 1/2.8-inch, 3MP SC3336—two performance upgrade CMOS sensors with DSI-2 technology, aiming at surveillance and automotive camera applications. Benefiting from PixGain technology, the SC3336 supports High Gain and Low Gain to adjust to light changes between day and night.

Both SC2336 and SC3336 are equipped with an ultra-low-noise readout, combined with cinema-level color visual effects technology for more detailed and more realistic night vision full-color imaging. Taking SC2336's Chroma as an example, the low color temperature increased by 15% , and the high color temperature increased by 11.8%.

In addition, the electrical crosstalk (Blooming) of SC2336 and SC3336 is significantly reduced by 45% and 35% , respectively , compared with the previous generation products, which improves the flashing that is easily generated by the camera in backlit scenes and night shooting lights.

The SC2336 has achieved mass production and the SC3336 is available for sampling now, with mass production expected in Q4 of 2021.

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STMicroelectronics announces its first multi-zone FlightSense dToF sensor for general-purpose applications. The VL53L5CX sensor provides up to 64 sensing zones with multi-target detection, distance measurement up to four meters in each zone, and a wide square-edged field of view with 63° diagonal.

 The sensor is suited to gesture recognition, complex scene analysis including 3D room mapping for robotics, storage-tank level monitoring to assist in inventory management, liquid-level control, and waste-bin-level monitoring to enable smart refuse collection for enhanced efficiency.

Featuring ST’s histogram processing, which greatly reduces the impact of cover-glass crosstalk, the sensor can be integrated and hidden behind various types of front panels. The new motion-indicator feature allows the sensor to detect if the target has moved or not.

The number of sensing arrays is programmable and the sensor can provide up to 60 fps in 16-zone (4×4) mode for fast-ranging mode. With simple software configuration to reach high resolution of 8×8 zones, the VL53L5CX can also assist keystone correction for video projectors and provide an accurate mini depth-map for AR/VR applications.

The VL53L5CX contains a low-power microcontroller and is capable of autonomous operation for power-saving applications. It comes in a fully integrated 6.4mm x 3.0mm x 1.5mm module that contains an infrared VCSEL and a receiver with embedded SPADs and histogram based ToF processing engine.

All parts are in production now, priced from $3.90.