Albert Theuwissen posts his brief review and impressions from IISW 2015 held in Vaals, Netherlands last week. "
In conclusion : no major new technologies were introduced, neither any pixel size below 1 um, but everything is getting better in performance and more compact in size."
I would like to say that pushing the conversion gain to the limit of being able to do photon counting is also new in the conference.
ReplyDelete-yang ni
Exactly what I said : everything is getting better in performance and more compact in size ! Do not understand me wrong, I enjoyed the workshop very much, and improving the existing technology is more than a challenge by itself ! It was great to organize it together with Johannes and Pierre , and super to have the top imaging specialists at the workshop !
DeleteI will try to prepare more reviews in the coming days.
Albert, here is my thinking when writing this comment :
Delete1. fully depleted photodiode with charge transfert separated the dilemme between conversion gain and collecting surface, that makes a tremendous progress on pixel performance.
2. today conversion gain is attached to dynamic range. Pushing FD into extreme value will force us to find a solution to separate the conversion gain from DR.
So for me, this is a new starting point and it's important.
Thanks for organising every 2 years this fantastic conference !!!
-yang ni
In our business, it is always a fine line between "new" and "improvement". I (naturally) have to agree with Yang Ni that room temperature photoelectron counting without avalanche or averaging falls more in the new technology category. Otherwise, everything we do is just an improvement on a MOS capacitor and a pn junction combination.As I mentioned in another thread in this blog, I think we will look back at this workshop as watershed moment for future photon counting image sensors for mainstream applications. ST is already in this business with SPADs, and I think other applications will follow. And so will the other S companies, in 10 years time.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as you get older, either everything looks the same, (or if your memory is fading, everything looks new!). I think I am leaning towards the latter!
Yes I have to agree with you Eric. Maybe in certain Sciences such as Nuclear or Astrophysics, "new" may have a completely different meaning. As technologists, new is simply (not to belittle) a new way of utilizing through improvement. All of CIS can be defined by some rudimentary physics concepts that are quite well known such as coupled continuity equations or Maxwell's for example.
Delete