News
Albert Theuwissen plenairy spreaker ISSCC 2021 (International Solid-State Circuits Conference )
- Wednesday, 6 January 2021
Titel
There’ s more to the picture than meets the eye, and in the future it will become only much more
Abstract
Over the past five decades, solid-state imaging has gone through a difficult “childhood”, changing technology during its “adolescence”, and finally growing up to become a mature, “adult” technology that can compete with the human visual system when it comes to image quality. State-of-the-art mobile devices enjoyed by consumers, rely on a multi-disciplinary mixture of analog electronics, digital circuits, mixed-signal design, optical know-how, device physics, semiconductor technology and algorithm development. As a result, the CMOS image sensors utilized in today’s mobile phones come close to perfection as far as imaging characteristics are concerned. However this does not mean that further developments in the field are no longer necessary. On the contrary, new technologies and new materials are opening up new dimensions and new applications which complement the classical imaging functionality of the sensors. This trend will ultimately convert the image sensor landscape from image capturing to smart vision. Consequently, the future of solid-state imaging will not revolve around the shooting of beautiful images only, as the market driver will no longer only be limited to the mobile phone market.
