Tokyo (iTers News) – Have you taken a snapshot on low-light surroundings? You might be disappointed to see your shots were blurred and spotty. Sony Corp. of Japan works a technology wonder developing a new generation of back-illuminated CMOS image sensor chip that are differently structured and laid out from a conventional CMOS image sensor.


Unlike the conventional CMOS image sensor that packs and partition a block of RGB pixels and logic circuitries on the same level of a silicon chip, Sony’s new breakthrough technology stacks them in a 3D structure.

For example, Sony puts a grid of back-illuminated structure RGB pixels on top of a layer of analog and digital circuitry. The 3D structure gives ampler room for putting more of crucial building blocks on each of the two layers without compromising chip die size and power consumption.

Take a layer of RGB pixel blocks for example. Sony can pack more of tiny RGB pixels on a given space with no penalty of pixel size shrinking. The merit is to achieve higher image quality even in low-lights.

CMOS image sensor chips are referred to as image sensors that are fabricated in the same CMOS process that semiconductor chips are manufactured by patterning N-channel and P-channel transistors in a complementary way.

Short for complimentary metal oxide semiconductor, the CMOS process enabled the image sensor makers to fabricate chips in a thumbnail-size silicon wafer at lower costs, but higher volumes, compared with CCD image sensors, opening the way for film-less digital cameras to get commoditized and popularized.

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But, it sacrifices image quality, because it gets increasingly difficult to pack more and more number of pixels into a tiny chip, which can match those of a CCD image sensor. To cram more of pixels requires the shrinking of the pixel size, which penalizes image quality especially in low-lights. Sony’s new manufacturing breakthrough paves the way for packing more number of pixels into an existing chip space without sacrificing pixel sizes. l

It also allows the company to embed more hardwired functionalities into the chip, including DSP-based image sensor processor circuitry and other firmware, which used to be an external and discrete chip.

All combined, the manufacturing process translate into more compact image sensor chip size, lower power consumption, superior image quality, cturing processes specialized for superior image quality, and faster processing speed.

Prototype samples will be shipped from March, 2012. Accordingly, models have been developed with Sony’s unique “RGBW Coding” function, which facilitates low noise, high quality image capture even in low light condition, and the proprietary “HDR (High Dynamic Range) Movie” function, which achieves brilliant color even when taking pictures against bright light.

 

 

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