SUSS Discusses Wafer-Level Camera Manufacturing

December 2009 issue of German "Optik & Photonik" journal features Suss article on wafer-level camera manufacturing. According to the company, an estimated 80 million WLC modules have been delivered in 2009. The article goes in great lengths talking about background history behind the new micro-optics ideas, with natural emphasis on Suss contribution to the history.

The article also covers microlens imprint lithography (SMILE), where a liquid polymer is dispensed on the wafer and the lenses are imprinted by using a transparent stamp or mold and UV-light for curing. Master lens arrays consisting of aspherical microlenses with profile deviation below 50nm (rms) and surface roughness below 2nm (rms) were demonstrated on full 8" wafer scale by Suss MicroOptics. Recently Kaleido Technology, Denmark, presented a first 8" diamond milled lens master in brass, providing spherical, aspherical and free-form lenses with better than 2um lateral position accuracy.

The wafer-scale master wafers are then transferred into a soft stamp, usually made of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by casting. The PDMS layer serves as a stamp imprinting the shape on the microlens material. This material is not named by the article, other than saying that it's often kept in secret by the companies and now can be sourced from DELO, Germany and Asahi Kasei, Japan.

Another article from Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering talks about milling to produce wafer level optics, either directly or as a master for replication.

iSuppli Q4 2009 Market Report

iSuppli published its Q4 2009 Image Sensors report. The market for area image sensors is predicted to decline from $7.4B and 1.4B units in 2008, to $6.0B and 1.3B units in 2009, resulting in a decrease of 15.5% in total area image sensor revenues in 2009.

DSCs remain the major application for CCDs, while mobile handsets use CMOS for mostly cost-sensitive reasons. Videoconferencing represents the second largest market application for CMOS sensors in terms of unit shipments, due to their inclusion in PC notebooks.

Mobile handsets are expected to remain the dominant application for CMOS sensors in the next five years as come 2013, 50 percent of total CMOS image sensor revenue will come from the mobile handset market, up from 43 percent in 2009. In terms of units, mobile handsets will account for approximately 78 percent of total CMOS image sensor units in 2009 and will occupy a similar amount five years from now.

ISuppli also presents a resolution trends chart:

Albert Theuwisen Reviews Year 2009

Albert Theuwissen published a review of 2009 and expectations from 2010 in Harvest Imaging blog:

"I heard from various industrial sources that CCD fabs as well as CMOS fabs are completely filled with image sensor wafers. Apparently the future for imaging looks bright.
Looking back to 2009, it was a difficult year for many of us in the imaging business."

ENG - Image Sensor Company from Japan

It came to my attention that is another small Japan-based company dealing with image sensor design - ENG. The name stands for "Exploitation of Next Generation". Although the company has started in 1992 and was active in different areas over the years, its only products these days are image sensors and related activities. The main differentiation of ENG sensors is high DR, up to 120db. All listed sensors are based on 7.65um pixels and have VGA resolution with 12b ADC.

With Brookman and Rosnes, ENG is the third small company in Japan dealing with CMOS sensor design.

Anteryon Mulls IPO in Q3 2010

KoersAlarl.nl, Het Financieele Dagblad and another article from Het Financieele Dagblad quote Dutch newspaper Financial Telegraaf saying that Anteryon considers IPO on the Amsterdam stock exchange (a part of Euronext exchange) or, less probably, on NASDAQ. Anteryon manufactures wafer-scale optics for Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola camera phones.

Hynix Introduces VGA Sensor in ShellUT CSP Package

October Hynix newsletter presents a new VGA sensor in NeoPac CSP package from OptoPac. Hynix dubbed this package ShellUT. The sensor is based on 2.25um pixels, has 100mW typical power consumption and is supposed to go into mass production in Dec. 2009. It also has "anti-shake" feature to use in camera phones with G-sensor.

Christmas Rumors

The rumors below are not confirmed and should be treated as such. Although I made some efforts to cross-check some of them, it does not guarantee their validity.

1. Tower is preparing BSI image sensor process. If successful, Tower would become the second foundry, after TSMC, offering BSI process. So far BSI access was limited to big IDMs and selected TSMC customer club. Through Tower many more companies can start talking BSI.
   
   
2. DxO Labs is in talks to sale the company (see August Rumors). Aptina is one of the potential buyers. Google is another one. Given the difference between Aptina and Google resources, I guess it's unlikely that Aptina's bid wins.
   
   Now the interesting question is why Google needs DxO? My speculation is that DxO algorithms might be either integrated into Picasa or used to add nice camera features to Android platform.
    
3. Meanwhile, Aptina and Finland-based Heptagon are considering a joint project on wafer-level camera development. Heptagon has close relationships with Nokia, so this project might give Aptina a leg up on winning the designs at Nokia.
    
4.  Sharp is considering to switch its new CMOS sensors development to TSMC. If this happens, TSMC CIS market share would not be solely based on Omnivision's one.
   
   
5. SETi got big design win in Samsung handsets. With this win SETi starts its market expansion beyond China.
   

Toshiba Names CIS as One of the Top Priorities

Tech-On: Shozo Saito, Toshiba Semiconductor President, defines CMOS image sensors as one of the top priorities for its System IC Operation. Among the other priorities are analog, imagery and wireless chips. Saito also says that Toshiba currently hold the second-largest share worldwide in CMOS sensors - I guess it could be based on price, rather than unit volumes.

Caeleste, e2v, SensL Papers at CNES CMOS Detector Workship 2009

Caeleste published two new papers presented at the CNES CMOS Detector Workshop held on Dec 8-9 in Toulouse.

The first presentation covers e2v and Caeleste collaborative work on high-speed BSI sensor with large 24um 4T pixels. The sensor is manufactured by Tower in 0.18um process. The final product array size is 1680x1680 and it can be read out at 1000fps speed. The article talks about a smaller size prototype. 5.5um thick BSI substrate allows 90-95% peak QE.

The second presentation describes SensL, Caeleste and Vrije University of Brussels work on high speed SPAD photon counting array suitable for ToF sensing. The hybrid imager resolution is 128x2. The pixel size is 100x100um. With a nice analog time interpolation the sensor was able to achieve 154ps RMS time resolution or a little worse than 2cm range resolution. Each pixel has 479(!) transistors, including 15-bit time counter:

Micron Reports 13% Drop in CIS Foundry Revenues

Seeking Alpha published Micron's quarterly conference call for the quarter ended on Dec. 3, 2009 (first quarter in Micron's 2010 fiscal year).

Ron Foster, Micron CFO, said few words about the image sensor foundry business:

"Sales in memory products increased 38%, while sales of image sensors decreased 13%. Imaging revenue was $108 million in the first quarter and represented 6% of the Micron consolidated net sales. Recall of the first quarter results reflect our manufacturing services, including wafer fabrication to Aptina, following a spin off of that business in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned previously, we continue to account for our ownership interest in Aptina under the equity method of accounting."