Samsung Electronics mass-produces new CMOS sensor

Samsung Electronics mass-produces new CMOS sensor

 Samsung Electronics of South Korea announced that the backside illumination technology for improving the sensitivity of CMOS sensors has reached the practical level and will start mass production of products in 2010. So far, the three major CMOS sensor companies will all start mass production of CMOS sensors using backside illumination technology before 2010.

      Backside illumination is a technology that can eliminate the only drawback of CMOS sensors, namely low sensitivity. CMOS sensors have three or more wiring layers on their light sensors (photodiodes), which block some of the incident light, and their sensitivity is lower than that of CCD sensors, which have only one wiring layer, and is only about half of the latter. BSI-type CMOS sensors, on the other hand, have no wiring layers on their light sensors, and light is collected from the back side of the light sensors (silicon substrate side), which can prevent the incident light from being blocked.