Pixpolar has some radical thinking in the race to improve camera output image quality and dynamic range of the sensor by using just one transistor per pixel signal instead what has become common, four. Pixpolar the company that brought you that picture deblurring concept have a little video out with some details on why less is more with sensors. Not a very exciting video but the boffin in you will get that 1T MIG Pixel charge is collected into the modified internal gate, has extremely low cross talk, gives off no blooming, has low read noise, and a low fixed pattern noise. The whole 1T MIG manufacturing process is compatible with the standard digital CMOS process.
With only one transistor per pixel one can achieve all the functionality found in a standard 4 transistor CMOS image sensor pixel. One single transistor on top of the charge collection area means that pixels can be scaled down without sacrificing full well capacity and dynamic range. If one additional transistor is included, Non-Destructive Correlated Double Sampling (NDCDS) is enabled, which means that one can take multiple very low-noise samples during single exposure without sacrificing the signal-to-noise ratio.
We think that future image sensor pixels should be more simple and elegant and that they should offer better performance than is possible today. The present 4T CMOS pixel has been pushed towards its limits and yet the image quality should be improved. New approaches are needed to overcome the challenges in today’s technologies.