NTT Demos 0.84um Color-Routing Pixel

NTT Device Technology Lab publishes an OSA Optica paper "Full-color-sorting metalenses for high-sensitivity image sensors" by Masashi Miyata, Naru Nemoto, Kota Shikama, Fumihide Kobayashi, and Toshikazu Hashimoto.

"Image sensors play a critical role in current technologies ranging from smartphones to autonomous vehicles. In these technologies, high-sensitivity image sensors are highly desired because they enable dark-scene/ultra-fast imaging. Unfortunately, a conventional sensor architecture that employs color filters on every pixel fundamentally limits the detected light power per pixel because of the filtering, which has been a long-standing barrier to sensitivity improvement. Here, we demonstrate polarization-insensitive metasurface lenses (metalenses) that sort primary colors on high-density pixels without the use of color filters. The metalenses simultaneously act as pixel-scale color splitters and lenses and are compatible with complementary metal–oxide-semiconductor sensor technology. An image sensor with such metalenses significantly enhances the detected light power, while affording high image quality, incident angle tolerance, and sub-micrometer spatial resolution. The demonstrated architecture opens the way to the development of high-sensitivity color image sensors that exceed current limits while maintaining consistency with state-of-the-art sensor technology."