Sony Corporation

Yasuo Kanou

Seisuke Yamanaka

Tetsuro Kumesawa

Osamu Nishima

Tadayoshi Mifune

Shigeyuki Ochi

Hiromichi Matsui

Masaaki Isobe

A CCD imager includes a large number of light receiving sections each having in turn a semiconductor surface region of a second conductivity type, a first semiconductor region of a first conductivity type, a semiconductor region of the second conductivity type and a second semiconductor region of the first conductivity type, vertically. The second semiconductor region is formed by a dual structure of the low concentration semiconductor region and the high concentration semiconductor region. The dual structure provides for shuttering at a lower voltage since the potential barrier along the depth of the light receiving section is no longer affected by the amount of the stored charges, while spreading of the depletion layer at the junction is suppressed by the high concentration semiconductor region.

CCD imager

In a solid state image sensor of the type which employs an inter-line transfer charge-coupled imaging device, the electrodes of the vertical shift registers are enlarged to extend to places which lie between image pick-up portions aligned in the vertical direction of the device. Each of the image pick-up portions comprises an image sensing area and a transfer gate. Preferably, every other image pick-up portion of a conventional CCD imaging device is removed to provide spacing between the image pick-up portions relative to the vertical direction.

Solid state image sensor

A solid-state video camera employing a plurality of image sensing means in the form of charge coupled device chips which are arranged in such a manner that the video image cast on respective chips are displaced by distance equal to .tau.H/N where .tau..sub.H is the reciprocal of the image sampling frequency, also referred to as the alignment pitch of the picture elements in the horizontal direction and N is the number of charge coupled chips. After converting the images into electrical signals, read-out timings of given picture elements of respective chips are shifted in time in accordance with the shift in distance between the images on the respective chips prior to mixing the output signals. In this way a video output signal having a wide-band width is obtained. In addition, color video information is possible by the use of color filters which may be disposed in front of the respective charge coupled chips.

Solid state camera

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Yasuo Kanou