Toshiba Develops 4.7mm-thin 13MP Camera Module

VR-Zone quotes Japanese language IT Media saying that Toshiba unveiled on March 28, 2013 a new 4.7mm-thin 1/3.07-inch camera module aimed to smartphones and tablet computers. It is designated as the TCM9930MD, and Toshiba claims that it is currently the world's thinnest 13MP camera module.

Samples of the camera module will be available at around May 2013. Mass production of the modules is projected to start in December 2013.

Tech-on adds that the TCM9930MD lens consists of four plastic elements, and a dedicated signal processing circuit is used to compensate for the lens distortion and restore MTF in the peripheral area of an image.

Also, Toshiba used a flip chip instead of a wire bonding to further reduce the thickness of the module.

Update: PR Newsire: Achieving today's high-resolution requires a larger optical size for corresponding lenses which results in a thicker camera module and a bulkier mobile device. The conventional method for lowering the camera module height is to modify the optical lens design which becomes problematic due to resolution drop around the corners of the image area. The TCM9930MD, however, resolves this drop in resolution with the use of the image pre-processing LSI (companion) chip that provides distortion correction and performs image resolution reconstruction (Resolution reconstruction is a super-reconstruction technology developed by Toshiba Corp. R&D center). Additionally, the TCM9930MD achieves its low profile by using a flip-chip structure for the image sensor. Toshiba opted to use flip-chip packaging because it allows for a large number of interconnects, with shorter distances than wire, which greatly reduces assembling area and package height.