Sony Employee Awarded Purple Ribbon Medal for Multi-Layer Stacked Image Sensor

Sony announces that Taku Umebayashi, an employee of the Sony, will be awarded the Purple Ribbon Medal for his achievements in the development of a laminated multifunctional CMOS image sensor structure. The Purple Ribbon Medal Award is given for outstanding inventions and discoveries in the field of science and technology and in the academic, sports, and arts and culture fields.

"We succeeded in mass-producing CMOS image sensor of the laminated structure which superimposed the pixel portion where the back illuminated pixel was formed on the chip that the signal processing circuit was formed instead of the support substrate of the conventional back-illuminated CMOS image sensor. This laminated structure enables large-scale circuits to be mounted at small chip sizes, and the pixel and circuit parts that are capable of independent formation can be adopted by a specialized manufacturing process, enabling miniaturization, high image quality, and high functionality at the same time. In addition, by adopting a cutting-edge process on the chip in which the circuit is formed, it is possible to achieve faster signal processing and low power consumption. In recent years, further improvements in performance have been applied as a basic technology to promote high functionality of various sensing devices, including image sensors."