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Teledyne e2v CMOS Image Sensors

Custom stacked CMOS sensors will add new performance and features in a tiny package

In December 2021, Sony Semiconductor Solutions announced a breakthrough at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting with a new stacked CMOS image sensor technology. Where conventional CMOS image sensors place photodiodes and pixel transistors on the same plane, this new technology separated photodiodes and pixel transistors onto different substrate layers. This new approach promised wider dynamic range and reduced noise.

While notable, this was one more step in a technology that has been developing for decades. And now sensor manufacturers are starting to really explore the possibilities of this stacked design approach. Yole Intelligence is predicting that after a transitional period in 2022, the CMOS image sensor (CIS) market will return to steady growth, reaching $29 billion dollars in 2028. The company sees custom CIS products for more niche, lower-volume differentiated markets, as a key driver for the overall market. Stacked CMOS design opens up many more opportunities for CMOS chips that are designed for specific applications and creating new kinds of competitive advantage.

“We are now at a point where manufacturing processes that were fundamentally experimental 20 years ago are becoming within reach of commercial applications,” explains Rafael Romay-Juarez, the Executive VP and General Manager at Teledyne Imaging Machine Vision Sensors. “This is just the start of a more transformational opportunity, where 3D stacked sensors are an opportunity to bring more added-value functionality into CMOS image sensors in a cost-effective manner.”

Read the full article here.

Manufacturers can rely on sophisticated sensors to revolutionize the way they do business, enabling enhanced quality control, improved efficiency, and increased safety.

As 3D sensor technology advances, it is poised to shape new applications in areas such as manufacturing and logistics, enabling greater efficiency, productivity, and the ability to accurately scan fast-moving objects without motion artefacts.

The global 3D sensor market is projected to reach $57 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 13% from 2022, according to Allied Market Research. The technology’s first commercial use was in the gaming field for 3D imaging and detection, and 3D depth-sensing technology in consumer devices has been increasing over the past decade driven by smartphone demand and the ability to unlock the phone using 3D facial recognition instead of a fingerprint or PIN.

Click here to read the full Quality Magazine article by Teledyne e2v’s Ha Lan Do Thu.

We know that CMOS technology has been replacing CCD in most applications during the past 20 years, but Rafael Romay-Juarez, the Executive VP and General Manager at Teledyne Imaging Machine Vision Sensors, believes this is just the start of a more transformational opportunity.

CMOS technology has enabled reducing the complexity of cameras by bringing to the sensor:

• Timing generation
• Power biasing
• ADC and control

More and more functionality has been incorporated to CMOS sensors, up to the point that the pixel array is now not the dominant fraction of the die size.

Rafael-Juarez told the audience at the EMVA Business Conference in Seville, Spain, that 3D stacked sensors are an opportunity to bring more and more functionality into CMOS image sensors in a cost-effective manner.

“We are now at a point where processes that were very difficult 20 years ago are now becoming a reality,” he says.

Click here to read the full IMVE article.

3D imaging technology has been around for several decades, but the first products were only commercialized in the 2000s when major film studios released movies in 3D using the latest HD video cameras.

3D vision increases the autonomy and effectiveness of robots/machine systems in the factory automation market, proving essential for higher accuracy quality inspection, reverse engineering, and object dimensioning where 2D vision is limited. In addition, the use of vision system-guided robotics is growing and requires 3D vision for better remote guidance, obstacle recognition, and accurate moving.

Click here to read the full article by Teledyne e2v’s Ha Lan Do Thu which appears in the Autum 2022 issue of VISION Focus magazine.

The acceleration of product life cycles and the multiplication of vision-use cases leave vision system makers with no choice but to invest less time and money in new developments and focus on their added value.

In September 2022, Teledyne e2v released Optimom 2M, the first in a range of MIPI CSI-2 modules, to address this very challenge. The module combines the latest innovations in imaging and optics into one turnkey imaging solution by mounting a proprietary image sensor onto a board with a fixed lens and optional Multi Focus lens technology. But what are those innovations and how do they work? What benefits do they bring to vision-based systems?

Click here to read the full Photonics & Imaging Technology magazine article by Teledyne e2v’s Marie-Charlotte Leclerc.

Time-of-flight (ToF) technology enables new applications in multiple markets, resulting in a market boom for time-of-flight CMOS sensors over the last few years. This is mainly driven by the consumer and automotive markets, but also by prosumers — amateurs who purchase equipment with quality or features suitable for professional use. Overall, the technology is being used in industries such as robotics, logistics, construction mapping, and more recently, intelligent transportation systems (ITS).

There are multiple technologies based on the time-of-flight concept. Generally, all of them are synchronized with a light source and estimate the distance by calculating the time taken for the light to travel from the camera to the object and then back again.

Click here to read the full Tech Briefs article by Teledyne e2v’s Yoann Lochardet, Marketing Manager 3D and Sergio Morillas, Business Manager for 3D products and applications.

CMOS image sensors, designed especially for scanning applications, use a state-of-the-art, low noise, global-shutter pixel technology and offer electro-optical performances that were barely achievable with a pixel twice its size a few years ago.

Modern manufacturing and logistics distribution centers need to increase productivity levels by increasing conveyor speeds and widening fields of view and working ranges. However, this is limited by conventional automated inspection and scanning camera systems that use more traditional 4:3 or square format machine vision CMOS image sensors, which have the severe drawbacks of many redundant vertical pixels, and lower frame rates.

Click here to read the full Automation World article by Teledyne e2v’s Arnaud Foucher.

These image sensors excel at capturing the maximum image data over the largest area possible. But they come with caveats.

Sensor manufacturers have continuously sought to increase the resolution and performance of their products by decreasing the size of pixels while increasing their number. However, some applications require the scale and unique architecture of larger-format sensors to capture images under challenging conditions.

Read the full article.

The article “OCT Presents Multidimensional Imaging for Diagnosis and Detection” by Teledyne e2v’s Pierre Fereyre and Antoine Adam has been published in the July/August issue of Bio Photonics magazine. Click here to read the article.