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Contact : Valérie Nguyen (valerie.nguyen@cea.fr)
Optimizing image sensors
Developing better image sensor technologies from X-rays up to terahertz wavelength requires mastering and merging disparate fields such as optics, image sensors and image processing electronics.
With a focus on improving detection, lowering production costs, optimizing the complete camera system — including image processing, and opening new markets to help secure our industrial partners’ market share, Leti worked on these programs in 2009:
- Developing retinas for detecting photons from X-rays up to terahertz radiation with CMOS, CdTe and microbolometer technologies
- Improving photon detection by adding metamaterial technologies to standard image sensors processes
- Developing cost-effective micro-camera technologies, from single-mount applications to full wafer-level camera technologies
- Opening new applications using image sensors with embedded electronics and new optical concepts for remote control applications such as domotics.
Multiple applications
These technologies cut across multiple applications, from mass-produced cell phone cameras to one-of-a-kind telescopes, and are a particular focus of Leti's visible imaging research. As advanced imaging technologies find new, more cost-sensitive applications, researchers are emphasizing wafer-scale integration and economies of scale.
Leti’s knowledge on 3D integration plays an important role in our image-sensing work, which requires well-optimized processes for creation of through-silicon vias, together with models of the electronic impact of such vias. It also requires new optical filters and back-thinning procedures to control shadowing, edge diffusion, and other undesirable optical effects.
Video:The microbolometer
2009 highlights
In 2009, Leti achieved the first cryogenic large field of view (180°) in a cooled mini-camera with pinhole optics embedded in the cryogenic system. It is world’s smallest cooled infrared camera.
For commodity CMOS image sensors, cost depends on device area, and smaller pixels give less-expensive sensors. The challenge is to maintain electro-optical performance when scaling down. In 2009, Leti also address the problem from several different angles:
- Backside illumination reduces interconnect shadowing and improves brightness.
- Integration of lenses with the sensor manufacturing process improves differentiation between pixels
- Plasmonic filters improve scattering at the filter edges.
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