M. Perenzoni and L. Gonzo from Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Center for Materials and Microsystems, Povo, Italy, designed an image sensor powered by the incoming light energy. 100Lux is enough to operate its 25um pixels. Unfortunately, I/O pads need an additional supply to drive external load. Future work is supposed to solve this and also increase the sensor's resolution from the current 4x4. The paper is published by IET Electronics Letters, the full text is available
on-line.
I'm recalling a curious story from Photobit times. We designed a low power pill-camera sensor 256x256 2fps and once disconnected the power from the sensor. It kept showing nice images! Apparently the power came from rectifying external controls in the input I/O pads + on-chip decoupling caps. But it felt sort of a magic first- the sensor which could operate w/o power...
ReplyDeletealex k.