Startups Boost Light in Phone Cameras

When it comes to the smartphone CamerasBig is better. greater Photo sensors and Lenses You have more light to work with, so they can solve more details. This is especially important, because filters that create colored images also prevent about 70 percent of the incoming light.

These color filters – which were removed as a network of red, green and blue pixels on image sensors – have been around for decades. But the new methods are using light physics to create colored images without preventing many photons. Three of these tracks for more clear photos It was presented in 2023 IEEE International Electron meeting ((Iedm). Now, these methods began to appear from the laboratory stage.

SamsungFor example, You will provide China’s new Xiaomi front camera that uses Samsung Nano Brom technology to improve low light performance. Technology does not replace color filters; Difficulty is used to collect more light in each pixel color. This enhances light sensitivity 25 percentAccording to the company.

At the same time, two new Emerging companies She developed ways to take colorful pictures without filters. and IMEC He called Spinoff eye This month announced that it had collected 15 million euros of seed financing. and PXE photography Technology, which combines depth and color photography, is shown in January Consumer electronics offer for this year ((Ces).

Both PXE and Eyeo are compatible with Cmos Sensors, the most common digital Photo sensor Used in cameras today. “The CMOS sensor is a very ripe and powerful platform to build on it. You have every device today,” says PXE founder and CEO. Yoav Berlatzky. But “everyone wants more photons that reach their CMOS sensors.”

A colored camera free from Eyeo filters

Eyeo aims to market the IEC’s research in IDM in 2023 for applications in Consumer electronicsSecurity and more. By removing the color filter, the start -up photo sensor is made three times the same as an allergy such as traditional CMOS sensors. “It seems as if we finally open the eyes of the photo sensor,” says Eyeo CEO. Jerion Hot.

Eyeo color guide, Eyeo image sensor guide from different wavelengths to appropriate pixel units.eye

It works by sending light through the vertical Wave This division lights on the basis of wavelength, then direct photons into a suitable pixel. The wave guides such as repression work, so that these pixels can be reduced to less than 0.5 micometers in the width, that is, about half the voltage of the model smartphone pixels. Technology also coincides with the sensitivity of the human eye compared to the candidate today photoAccording to IMEC search.

The color division technology is designed to be made using the tools and processes already in CMOS Captain. The challenge comes next to the program. Eyeo is now working to ensure that the sensor is compatible with its potential customer systems, according to HOEE.

With regard to applications, HoET says that the benefit of smaller and most sensitive image sensors from Eyeo is particularly clear Smartphones. However, technology is expected to be approved first for other uses, such as safety systems for low light conditions or Augmented reality The devices that require super sensors.

PXE brings 3D to CMOS

The main idea behind the PXE approach is similar. Both companies aim to imitate color filters without losing photons and “getting colors in one way or another in the right place on the right pixels” by bending the light waves, summarizing Peralatzki.

In this version of the image above, the red lines indicate that an object is closer, while the blue lines mean that they are far. Pxe

The PXE technology uses a layer of casic substances called “Holocoder” not only to create colorful images but also to work as a depth sensor (hence the “stereoscopic part” of the company’s name). When white light passes through Holocoder, it creates an overlapping pattern that is recorded by the sensor. Pxe Algorithms Then use this style to rebuild a virtual 3D image – Three -dimensional. The intervention pattern also encrypts information about the wavelength of light, so that the images of color (infrared) can be rebuilt simultaneously.

Berlatzky says PXE devices are “less strange” than the division of colors and other methods that use special engineering Metasurfaces. Many of its strength comes from the program. “The foundation of the algorithm is light physics,” explains Berlatzky. “You can think about it as if we were running it in the opposite direction, from the CMOS sensor to the world, and rebuilding what the camera already sees, in terms of depth and image.”

Like Eyeo, a PXE photo sensor can be used in a set of applications – especially in those that already have separate depths and photo sensors, such as cars and smartphones.