Some interesting trends in image sensor technology for consumer applications are :
– the incorporation of deep trench isolation (DTI) between the pixels to lower the optical and electrical cross talk. Announced were already DTI defined from the front side (ST) as well as the back side (Samsung), but new at the workshop are the DTIs that do not completely go through the thinned BSI silicon,
– building “walls” between the colour filters (called “buried CFA”) is finding its way to production. These walls limit optical and spectral cross-talk,
– very thin optical stacks, down to 1.5 um for BSI sensors,
– incoroporation of focus pixels for auto-focusing purposes. These focus pixels can be incorporated in a regular pattern, but sometimes a semi-random pattern is used as well. Moreover, the focus pixels do not need to be all of the same size,
– stacked imager are more and more introduced. During IISW 2009, the buss word was BSI, now it is “stacked”. Stacked imagers are going to solve all the problems ….
– the incorporation of W pixels continues, in more recent devices, up to 50 % of the pixels are W pixels.
In conclusion : no major new technologies were introduced, neither any pixel size below 1 um, but everything is getting better in performance and more compact in size.
Albert, 19/06/2015.