With a conventional front-illumination structure, the metal wiring and transistors on the surface of the silicon substrate that form the sensor’s light-sensitive area (photo-diode) impede photon gathering carried out by the on-chip lens, and this has also been an important issue in the miniaturization of pixels and widening optical angle response.
A back-illuminated structure minimizes the degradation of sensitivity to optical angle response, while also increasing the amount of light that enters each pixel due to the lack of obstacles such as metal wiring and transistors that have been moved to the reverse of the silicon substrate.
However, compared to conventional front-illuminated structures, back-illuminated structures commonly causes problems such as noise, dark current, defective pixels and color mixture that lead to image degradation and also cause a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio.
To overcome this Sony has newly developed a unique photo-diode structure and on-chip lens optimized for back-illuminated structures, that achieves a higher sensitivity of +6dB and a lower random noise of -2dB without light by reducing noise, dark current and defect pixels compared to the conventional front-illuminated structure. Additionally, Sony’s advanced technologies such as high-precision alignment have addressed any color mixture problems.
Sony has continued to advance the speed and picture quality of its CMOS image sensors, such as “Exmor”, with its unique “Column-Parallel A/D Conversion Technique” and dual noise reduction, in addition to the imaging expertise it has accumulated throughout its history of CCD development. With the development of this new back-illuminated structure, Sony has realized a CMOS image sensor with even higher sensitivity and lower noise. Furthermore, the back-illuminated structure also expands device potential in areas such as speed and dynamic range by enabling multiple metal wiring layers and greater flexibility in the transistor structure. Going forward, Sony will continue its development of image sensors that combine ease-of-use, advanced image quality and cutting-edge pixel miniaturization.
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