Sony Semiconductor Solutions have successfully developed the world’s first stacking CMOS image sensor to adopt dual -layered crystal pixel technology.
It is reported that the traditional scheme needs to place the photoelectric diode and pixel crystal pipe on the same substrate, and Sony’s new technology separates the two on different substrate layers.
Thanks to almost doubled the saturated signal level and the decrease of the dynamic range increase / noise, the new solution can significantly improve the imaging performance.
(From: sony official website)
In pixel chips, the diode responsible for photoelectric signal conversion, and the pixel crystal tube controlled by the control signal is located on the same layer. In the traditional stacked CMOS image sensor, the photoelectric diode and pixel crystal tube are arranged on the same substrate.
Under the same or smaller pixel size, the pixel structure of the new technology (above the logical chip of the signal processing circuit) can maintain or improve the existing characteristics.
In addition, manufacturers are allowed to optimize the two layers of optoelectronic diode and pixel transistor, respectively, thereby increasing the saturation signal level by about double the traditional image sensor and the dynamic range.
The increased saturation signal level plays an important role in achieving high -quality images in a wide dynamic range.
Pixel transistor other than the transmission door (TRG) -includes reset (RST), select (SEL) and amplifier (AMP) transistor -it is arranged in a non -photoelectric diode layer.
Thanks to the increase in the size of the amplifier crystal tube, Sony has successfully reduced the noise that is easy to produce at night and other darkest scenes, while preventing overexposure or lack of exposure in the case of strong sensitive contrast.
In the end, Sony will push the higher imaging -quality dual -layered crystal pixel technology to many fields, such as mobile image sensors on smartphones.
