Monday, August 18, 2008

IBM Pixel Design Tutorial and Results

It came to my attention that IBM's Mark Jaffe presented pixel design challenges and ideas on 2007 CMOS Emerging Technologies Workshop.

After the recent wave of layoffs IBM image sensor business is probably not in best shape. Still, IBM CIS process brochure contains interesting process data:

IBM CIMG7SF and CIMG7HY offer 4T reference pixel with an optimized transfer gate. CIMG7SF uses a full 180nm technology and provides clients with a 5.0um reference pixel for design, as well as support for custom pixel designs. This technology is ideal for high-end applications and also supports reticle stitching for large die applications.

CIMG7HY uses 130nm technology for the metal layers to achieve reduced wiring pitches in the pixel array. This technology is ideal for small-format applications and provides the client with a 2.0 and 2.2um reference pixel using a 4T 4-shared (4T/4S) architecture. CIMG7HY also provides support for sub-2.0um custom pixel designs.

Both CIMG7SF and CIMG7HY include microlenses and color filters, along with pinned photodiode technology for reduced dark current. CIMG uses aluminum wiring for the last metal level and copper (Cu) wiring for the remaining metal levels. With thin back-end-of-line (BEOL) metal stacks and improved dielectric tolerance, CIMG is ideal for all your imaging needs.



Update: IBM put another image sensor brochure on-line. It mentions that IBM offers reticle stitching for large area sensors and also gives the pixel cross-section:

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