More on Cmosis Plans

"We are quite unique as a privately held, pure play, turnkey solution provider for image sensors," co-founder Tim Baeyans told optics.org.

Key advances include the capability to make large-sized pixels with low crosstalk, since the technique previously used at FillFactory worked well for small pixels but suffered from crosstalk on large pixels.

"We also have new technology to make very large-area sensors with an acceptable yield, which allows to extend the size of the image sensor as compared with the wafer size," explained Baeyans. "Cypress has a patent application on a similar technique, but we have now filed an alternative, and more fault-tolerant, method."

The Cmosis team has developed CMOS sensors for TDI image capture, which has previously relied on CCD technology. "CMOS implementations of such sensors were rather complex, but we found an elegant way of doing it," he said.

"We will start by developing image sensors for specific customers with special needs, and who cannot find standard products to meet those needs," said Baeyans. "However, we are currently talking with customers to help us define a new standard product."