Image Sensor Creativity Award: Call for Nominations

Reading the comments questioning the merits of Kodak paper that won Walter Kosonocky Award, I thought about making an open vote on the best creative image sensor idea published in the last 2 years, starting from summer 2007 (what is called summer in the northern hemisphere). The type of publications is not limited - it can be IEEE/SPIE journals or conferences papers, IISW 2007 or 2009 presentations, patent applications, university theses, white papers, web articles or whatever else which has legible technical description of the idea. Self-nominations are welcomed too and should not be ashamed of.

Since the nomination and voting process is completely open, I hope there would be no complaints on merits and criteria.

I plan to collect the nominations after a week and put them into a poll list using Blogger vote gadget, something like on the picture below:



Multiple choices will be allowed, so if someone hesitates between two or three candidates, she/he can vote for all. One thing I worry of is that big organizations like Omnivision or Aptina can promote their papers over smaller players, such as Siliconfile or CMOSIS. My hope is that purely technical considerations would prevail over corporate solidarity.

OK, let's start. I will post my candidates in the comments below.

Ominivision Announces Automotive HD Imager

Yahoo: Omnivision introduced 1MP 30fps image sensor tailored for advanced automotive imaging applications. The new OV9715 sensor features a zero degree micro lens shift and 1280 x 800 pixel array for advanced forward-looking and extreme wide angle field of view vision applications, such as 360 degree bird's eye view and parking assistance systems.

The 1/4 inch OV9715 delivers low light performance of 3300 mV/(lux-sec). The OV9715 is currently sampling with volume production slated for the second half of calendar 2009. AEC-Q100 qualification and PPAP are expected to be completed by Q3'09.

Samsung Shifts CIS Capacity to Memory?

Digitimes published rumors that due to improved forecast for DRAM and NAND flash in Q3 2009, Samsung has shifted its production capacity from image sensors to memory products and thus will temporarily suspend supply of image sensors to users outside the Samsung Group in the Q3. However, Samsung's Taiwan distributors say that a supply suspension is unlikely. But in case a shortage does occur in the third quarter, the distributors have asked customers not to place extra orders for the Q3. Digitimes also gives the following table of sensor's manufacturing bases:

Leading CIS manufacturers: Capacity arrangement
Vendor	Capacity arrangement	Capacity suppliers	Products
Samsung	Two 8-inch fabs, one 12-inch fab	Samsung	VGA, 1.3M, 2M, 3M, 5M, 8M, 10M
OmniVision	Three 8-inch fabs, one 12-inch fab	Powerchip, TSMC	VGA, 1.3M, 3M, 5M
Aptina	One 8-inch fab	Micron	VGA, 2M, 5M, 8M

Kodak Paper Won Walter Kosonocky Award

Kodak ISSCC 2008 paper won Walter Kosonocky Award For Significant Advancement in Solid-State Image Sensors. The paper is titled:

Low Crosstalk and Low Dark Current CMOS Image Sensor Technology Using a Hole-Based Detector.
Eric Stevens, Hung Doan, Jeffery Kyan, Gang Shi, Jian Wu, Hirofumi Komori, Hiroaki Fujita, Christopher Parks, Cristian Tivarus
Proc. ISSCC, pp.59-61 San Francisco, California USA February 2008.

Congratulations to the whole Kodak team!

Micron HD Sensor Inside Flip UltraHD

EEtimes presented Portelligent reverse engineering of hugely successful (for a camcorder) Flip UltraHD. Pure Digital, the company behind this camcorder was recently acquired by Cisco. The sensor is said to be Micron 1/4.5 inch HD CMOS sensor with 2.2um pixels. Portelligent assumes it's 1.6MP MT9M002 with 12b ADC that was announced in March 2009.

3D "Censors" Coming Soon

San Jose Mercury News made this funny "Censors" typo when talking about oncoming applications for new 3D sensors. The article is mainly based on the interview with Jim Spare, Canesta's CEO. Spare says that the company has developed a 3D sensor that's built on just one CMOS chip - opening up a host of price sensitive applications.

Spare expects Canesta's first 3-D chips to be used in industrial devices - such as cameras that count prescription pills - later this year. Consumer gadgets using the sensors should hit the market next year.

Sony High Full Well CCD and Omnivision BSI Papers Review

A nice Image Sensor blog from Japan reviews papers from IISW 2009.

Sony paper is named "High-saturation output 1.55-um-square pixel IT-CCD with metal wiring line structure in a pixel". What I was able to understand from Google translation, Sony used low temperature process to minimize diffusion and get more abrupt junction and increase the photodiode capacitance in small pixels.

Omnivision's paper is titled "The Mass Production of BSI CMOS Image Sensors: Performance Results". Google translation gives the following performance numbers for the pixels, as far as I can understand:

• 1.4um and 1.75um pixels BSI mass produced using bulk P-epi/P-sub
• 2-shared pixel design
• 110nm (FEOL) & 90nm (BEOL) process (1.4um pixel is 90nm/90nm)
• QE (R / Gb / Gr / B): 1.4um = 43.8/53.5/53.6/51.6%, 1.75um = 53.0/60.1/60.2/60.4
• Full Well: 1.4um = 4,500 e, 1.75um = 6,500 e
• SNR10: 1.4 um = 110Lux, 1.75um = 60Lux
• Both pixels have the read noise of 1-2e
• No Image Lag
• Dark Current is 22 ~ 27e / s @ 50C (80e/sec @ 60C)

Honestly, I was disappointed to see relatively low QE despite all the added process complexity. I doubt that switch to BSI is justifiable with these QE numbers. Obviously, QE is not the whole story, one needs to look at color crosstalk too. I'd guess the crosstalk is rather low, otherwise SNR10 of 110Lux would not be achieved.

Smartphone Sensor Suppliers

Digitimes published a nice table summarizing the suppliers for few high-profile smartphones:

Smartphone Image Sensor Suppliers
Vendor	Smartphone model	Megapixel Count	Supplier
HTC	Hero	5	Aptina, Samsung
Apple	iPhone 3GS	3	OmniVision, ST
LG	Viewty Smart	8	Aptina, Samsung
Samsung	Omnia	5	Samsung, Aptina

Talking about HTC Hero, Digitimes say that Aptina supplies 60%, while Samsung - 40% of the phone sensors. Aptina will supply more than 50% sensors for HTC handsets in the second half of 2009, and the rest will be shared by Samsung and ST, the sources indicated.

Nemotek Article

Semiconductor International published an article about Nemotek wafer level packaging capabilities. The claim is that Nemotek has established a relationship with most of the big players in the industry and is confident that it will become a major supplier of wafer-level cameras.

Organic Photodiodes Improving

EETimes: Researchers from Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) have developed a cost-effective production process for organic large-area photo diodes: Instead of the usual method of casting or doctor blading, they succeeded in spraying the material.

The Siemens researchers claim their spraying method generates active semiconductor of a rather good quality. They say that the diodes feature very low dark current and also a very high efficiency of 75%. In addition, the lifetime can be expected at six years, and the speed is high enough to use the diodes in computer tomography applications. The image lag, another relevant parameter for these applications, is significantly better than with available photo detectors made of amorphous silicon.

The prototype introduced by the Siemens researchers features 256 x 256 pixels, but since the process scales well, it is said to be possible to produce diode arrays with more than 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Meanwhile, Fujifilm researchers present their organic sensor paper on Technical Group on Information Sensing Technologies (IST) meeting on July 24, 2009 in Japan. Their paper is titled:

"CMOS Image Sensor with a Thin Overlaid Panchromatic Organic Photoconductive Layer as the Best Candidate for Sensors with Reduced Pixel Size."