Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Eric Fossum, ON Semi, and Kodak Win Emmy Award

Dartmouth: US National Academy of Television announces 2021 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards. The Award for Invention and Pioneering Development of Intra-Pixel Charge Transfer CMOS Image Sensors goes to:
  • Eric Fossum
  • ON Semiconductor
  • Eastman Kodak

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations in the name of the International Image Sensor Society.
    Another award for our community !!
    Albert Theuwissen, president of the International Image Sensor Society.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CCD?
    Congratulations to this unique team

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! This is for Invention and Pioneering Development of Intra-Pixel Charge Transfer CMOS Image Sensors, not CCD. Mike Tompsett got an Emmy last year for the CCD image sensor. I don't know what the selection committee thought about, but when I was asked, I said JPL was #1, and Photobit #2. But since Photobit was acquired by Micron who then spun out Aptina which was then acquired by ON, I guess ON was considered the descendant of Photobit. Of course ON also bought the Kodak image sensor business (and a few companies in Europe) so awarding ON and Kodak seems redundant. Anyway, I am disappointed they did not recognize JPL but it seems the technical Emmy is very industry-oriented and they prefer to recognize companies. In fact, out of all the technical Emmy's this year, I am the only individual who is named - the rest are all companies. see https://theemmys.tv/tech-72nd-award-recipients/

      Delete
    2. I should have mentioned that JPL and Kodak collaborated early on to develop the first CMOS image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer that used the PPD. I contacted Tom Lee at Kodak around '93 or '94 and he immediately said yes, let's do this together. The big problem was that the CCD PPD (Teranishi et al.) used very high voltages to transfer the charge (e.g. 20+V) but a CMOS version had to work with 5 volts or less - a much harder problem. JPL did the rest of the chip and Kodak adapted their CCD PPD process, essentially a JFET-type photogate, for CMOS and figured out the low voltage TG operation (implants, alignments, etc.) It was presented at the 1995 IEEE Workshop on CCDs and Advanced Image Sensors in Dana Point CA. Mike Guidash, currently an IISS Board Member and CIS consultant, was part of that team. Photobit and Kodak (and Motorola) later worked together, with Roger Panicacci (now at ON) leading the effort at Photobit.

      Delete
  3. Congratulations for Emmy Award on invention of CIS!

    ReplyDelete

All comments are moderated to avoid spam and personal attacks.