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High-resolution colour and range image capture on a single chip

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, page 11 (2025)Cite this article

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The device architecture consists of a stack of RGB pixels, made of panchromatic organic photoconductive film that absorbs visible light, on NIR indirect-time-of-flight (iToF) silicon pixels. The RGB pixels are 1.0 μm Bayer pixels, whereas the ranging pixels are 4.0 μm iToF pixels, with 16 RGB pixels arranged on one iToF pixel. To reduce the number of required transistors and enable the miniaturization of pixel size, pixel transistors are shared by multiple pixels. The organic photoconductive film forms an on-chip filter that absorbs visible light, but not NIR light, enabling the acquisition of RGB images and suppressing NIR colour mixing. The iToF pixel absorbs NIR light transmitted through the organic photoconductive film, minimizing visible light noise in ranging information acquisition. Transparent wires that drive the RGB pixels efficiently guide NIR light to the iToF pixels, ensuring high quantum efficiency. An RGB cut filter between the RGB and iToF pixels further suppresses RGB colour mixing in the iToF pixels.

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References

Original article

  • Ohkubo, T. et al. A color image sensor using 1.0-μm organic photoconductive film pixels stacked on 4.0-μm Si pixels for near-infrared time-of-flight depth sensing. In Proc. 2024 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting 41-6 (2024)

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  1. Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering https://www.nature.com/natrevelectreng/

    Silvia Conti

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  1. Silvia Conti
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Correspondence to Silvia Conti.

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Conti, S. High-resolution colour and range image capture on a single chip. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 11 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-024-00137-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-024-00137-3

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