Nikon Corporation

Nokia Corporation

Nixon Corporation

Tadashi Narui

Toru Takagi

Takeshi Yagi

Keiichi Akagawa

Takafumi Komaba

An image-capturing element manufacturing method includes: preparing a first substrate having a plurality of pixels that are two-dimensionally continuously arrayed; preparing a second substrate having a plurality of circuit blocks that respectively have connection terminals to a power supply and a reference potential and that are electrically independent from each other, each of the plurality of circuit blocks having at least some of circuits to read out signals from the plurality of pixels; laminating the first substrate and the second substrate to electrically couple the plurality of circuit blocks and the plurality of pixels overlapping therewith; and cutting circuit blocks around at least one of the plurality of circuit blocks and pixels overlapping therewith to form a laminate in which the plurality of pixels are laminated onto the at least one of the plurality of circuit blocks.

Image-capturing element manufacturing method, image-capturing element and image-capturing device

A solid-state image sensor includes: four or more photoelectric conversion units having spectral sensitivity characteristics different from one another; an amplifier unit disposed in correspondence to each group of photoelectric conversion units among N groups (N represents an integer less than a quantity of the four or more photoelectric conversion units and equal to or greater than one), the four or more photoelectric conversion units being divided into the N groups; and transfer units, each disposed in correspondence to one of the four or more photoelectric conversion units, which transfer a signal generated at the photoelectric conversion unit to the amplifier unit disposed for the group to which the photoelectric conversion unit belongs.

Solid state image sensor with plural overlapping photoelectric conversion units

A solid-state imaging device comprises a plurality of pixels that includes a photoelectric conversion portion, a charge-voltage converter that receives the charge and converts the charge to a voltage, an amplifier that outputs a signal corresponding to a potential of the charge-voltage converter, a transfer portion that transfers a charge from the photoelectric conversion portion to the charge-voltage converter, and a reset transistor that resets a potential of the charge-voltage converter; a connection transistor that connects or disconnects the charge-voltage converter of at least one of the pixels and the charge-voltage converter of at least one of the other pixels. A threshold voltage of the connection transistor is higher than a threshold voltage of the reset transistor.

Solid-state image sensing device

A solid-state image device has a photoelectric conversion part and has pixels for focus detection and image pixels that are allocated in a row direction and a column direction, and the solid-state image device includes a vertical image scanning circuit that reads image signals to a horizontal image output circuit via vertical image signal lines, a horizontal image scanning circuit that outputs, in a horizontal direction, image signals of one row read to the horizontal image output circuit, a horizontal scanning circuit for focus detection that reads signals for focus detection to a vertical output circuit for focus detection via horizontal signal lines for focus detection, and a vertical scanning circuit for focus detection that outputs, in a vertical direction, signals for focus detection of one column read to the vertical output circuit for focus detection.

Solid-state image device having focus detection pixels

Solid-state image sensors are disclosed that include an optical unit which separates incident light into a plurality of color elements, an optical receiving unit which converts each of the color elements separated by the optical unit to an electrical signal and an anti-reflection film having a high-refractive-index layer with a refractive index of 1.7 or higher and a low-refractive-index layer with a refractive index of less than 1.7. The anti-reflection film is between the optical unit for each of color elements and the optical receiving unit, on a semiconductor substrate. Each of the high-refractive-index layer and the low-refractive-index layer corresponds to at least one color element of the plurality of color elements and includes two or more layers. With such sensors it is possible to suppress the variation in sensitivity for each color.

Solid-state image sensors and display devices having anti-reflection film

In the present invention, a charge transfer unit is arranged on a first-plane side of a thinly-formed semiconductor base. Charge accumulating units are arranged on a second-plane side, the opposite side. A depletion prevention layer is arranged closer to the second-plane side than the charge accumulating units. The depletion prevention layer prevents a depletion region around the charge accumulating units from reaching the second plane of the semiconductor base. The depletion prevention layer can suppress surface dark current going into the charge accumulating units. Meanwhile, an energy ray incident from the second-plane side pass through the depletion prevention layer to generate signal charges in the charge accumulating units (depletion regions). The charge accumulating units collect, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, the signal charges which are to be transported to the charge transfer unit under voltage control or the like, and then are read to exterior as image signals.

Growing community of inventors

Sagamihara, Japan

Tadashi Narui