SeekingAlpha: TowerJazz updates on its image sensor business during its quarterly earnings call:
"Looking at our sensor business, we have new projects in the pipeline with large customers on our 65-nanometre global shutter platform that we expect will materialize towards the end of next year. While sales of the existing products are still growing. Although soft year-to-date, the industrial sensor market is beginning to recover and we’ve received double digit growth through 2020.
Our recent announcement of a wafer stacking backside illumination flow connecting a top thin BSI imaging wafer to a bottom CMOS wafer on our 65 nanometers, 300-millimeter technology has generated much interest. We’re in various engagements with significant customers for projects using this technology and the time of flight market mainly for face recognition.
We also continue our work with multiple customers on optical fingerprint solutions for under OLED and under LCD displays as well as we are seeing good adoption of our stitch single die, 300-millimeter substrate x-ray sensors."
Science Magazine publishes a paper "Quantum image distillation" by Hugo Defienne, Matthew Reichert, Jason W. Fleischer, and Daniele Faccio from University of Glasgow, UK, and Princeton University, USA. The same paper has already been published in Arxiv.org.
"Imaging with quantum states of light promises advantages over classical approaches in terms of resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, and sensitivity. However, quantum detectors are particularly sensitive sources of classical noise that can reduce or cancel any quantum advantage in the final result. Without operating in the single-photon counting regime, we experimentally demonstrate distillation of a quantum image from measured data composed of a superposition of both quantum and classical light. We measure the image of an object formed under quantum illumination (correlated photons) that is mixed with another image produced by classical light (uncorrelated photons) with the same spectrum and polarization, and we demonstrate near-perfect separation of the two superimposed images by intensity correlation measurements. This work provides a method to mix and distinguish information carried by quantum and classical light, which may be useful for quantum imaging, communications, and security."
Based on a 10µm pixel design and incorporating a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, the Bora image sensor offers a unique on-chip gated global shutter mode with gating times of up to 42ns at 30fps in a four-phase operation.
The Bora sensor comes with an evaluation kit, comprised of a compact 1-inch optical format calibrated module, which includes a light source for near infrared illumination. It also includes optics targeted at performing the ToF imaging at short-range distances to 5m or mid-range distances to 10m, while capturing real-time 3D information at a full resolution of 1.3MP.
Ha Lan Do Thu, Marketing Manager for 3D imaging at Teledyne e2v says, “We are very pleased to announce our newest Time-of-Flight sensor, which provides customers with true 1.3MP depth resolution at more than 30 fps. The sensor uniquely achieves excellent precision and accuracy in 3D measurements and is highly flexible, handling both short- and long-range capture over 10 meters and in outdoor conditions.”
PRNewswire: OmniVision announces a 3um pixel OV7251-2B global shutter sensor with shutter efficiency of 99.96% for machine vision applications. The cost-effective OV7251-2B achieves that by adding a new lightguide feature that improves the angular response of light capture for better system-level optical performance.
"We are improving on our widely deployed family of global shutter VGA sensors by providing a drop-in replacement for our prior generation sensor that offers an even better level of shutter efficiency with no design changes required," said Devang Patel, senior staff marketing manager for the security and emerging segments at OmniVision. "Additionally, our new lightguide feature improves the family's capture capabilities with better light confinement for higher system level optical performance."
"Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) have recently gained attention as materials for manufacturing optoelectronic devices in view of their tunable light absorption and emission properties and compatibility with low-temperature thin-film manufacture. The realization of CQD inkjet-printed infrared photodetectors has thus far been hindered by incompatibility between the chemical processes that produce state-of-the-art CQD solution-exchanged inks and the requirements of ink formulations for inkjet materials processing.
We fabricate inkjet-printed photodetectors exhibiting the highest specific detectivities reported to date (above 1012 Jones across the IR) in an inkjet-printed quantum dot film. As a patternable CMOS-compatible process, the work offers routes to integrated sensing devices and systems."
BusinessKorea reports that Samsung foundry was affected by defects at its Giheung fab that manufactures 90nm image sensors among other products. "The defects were caused by the use of contaminated equipment on an 8-inch wafer line located in Samsung Electronics' Giheung Plant in Korea. A Samsung Electronics official acknowledged that defective products were found, but said that the process has already been normalized and that the damage is estimated at billions of Korean won.
However, some experts say that the damage may be much more than estimated by Samsung Electronics. "I understand that Samsung has not calculated the exact amount of the damage yet," said an industry insider. "The loss can be much larger than the company’s estimate.”
Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Velodyne CEO and Founder David Hall prepares to take the company public, but in an unconventional way of "direct listing" - selling shares direct to the public without an intermediate entity like NASDAQ:
"Only two major companies, Spotify and Slack Technologies, have gone that route so far. Businesses that take the direct listing route make their Wall Street debuts without the road shows and price-setting that underwriters help with. But they don't get the infusion of cash that accompanies a traditional IPO, either. Hall doesn't sound convinced that would change his mind.
"It turns out to be a lot more work for us," he said. "It looks daunting from my point of view, so I'm dragging my feet on the thing. The last few weeks have not been kind to IPOs either."
Velodyne Lidar is valued at about $1.8 billion after raising about $225 million from investors who include Nikon, Ford Motor Co. and Baidu, according to PitchBook Data."
BusinessWire: RoboSense wins the CES 2020 Innovation Award the second year in a row. This year’s Award is for the first MEMS-based Smart LiDAR Sensor, the RoboSense RS-LiDAR-M1, winning in the Vehicle Intelligence and Self-Driving Technology category. RS-LiDAR-M1 is said to be the world’s first and only MEMS-based smart LiDAR sensor for self-driving passenger vehicles with its own embedded AI algorithm technologies and SoC.
BusinessWire: Cepton announces its Helius Smart Lidar System has been named a CES 2020 Innovation Awards Honoree. Helius is honored in two categories: Tech for a Better World, which highlights product innovations aiming to make positive social and global impacts.
Helius fuses three technologies: Cepton’s patented Micro Motion Technology (MMT); edge computing for minimum data burden and maximum ease of integration; and built-in advanced perception software for real-time analytics.
Blickfeld too receives CES 2020 Award in Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation category. Blickfeld LiDARs use centimeter-sized mirrors with a scanning angle of up to 100° x 30° resulting in a range of up to 100 meters at 10 % reflectivity. The optical coaxial setup provides spatial filtering to achieve the highest sunlight suppression. Solid-state technology ensures mechanical robustness and longevity.
Leddar PIXELL wins CES 2020 Award in Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation category. Pixell is a 3D flash LiDAR solution with a 180-degree field of view specifically designed for ADAS and Autonomous driving applications on autonomous shuttles, commercial vehicles, transit buses, and robotaxis. It leverages LeddarTech's state-of-the-art LCA2 LeddarEngine at its core.
Digitimes publishes an article saying that "Samsung Electronics is reportedly set to implement a US$100 billion sensor development project seeking to tap the lucrative worldwide sensor market."
"Sony officially said that Sony Black Technology not only created a variety of high-quality professional imaging equipment, but also provided a core component - image sensor for many brands of smartphones. The new year is not far off, let's look at the performance of the 2020 new cable image sensor." (Google translation)
"Sony's black technology not only creates a variety of high-quality professional imaging equipment, but also for a number of brands of smartphones to take pictures of the core components - image sensors. The new year is not far away, together to see the performance of the new 2020 Sotheby's image sensor." (Microsoft Bing translation)
SinoLink Securities expects Sony to unveil its 64MP 0.8um sensor till the end of this year. Possibly, the IMX686 is this sensor:
