Sony invests 794 million euros in expanding cmos image sensor production

Sony will expand production capacity for so-called stacked cmos image sensors. Such sensors will find their way to tablets and smartphones. The expansion will cost approximately EUR 794 million.

With the investment, Sony wants to expand production capacity in three production facilities in Nagasaki. The money will be used to purchase new wafer equipment and open new production lines for stacked cmos image sensors. The investments relate to the first half of the current financial year, which ends on March 31, 2013, up to and including the end of the next financial year. With the expansion, the total production capacity for CMOS and CCD image sensors will increase to 60,000 wafers per month by September 2013.

With Sony’s ‘stacked’ cmos image sensor technology, the so-called aperture ratio, or the ratio between the light-sensitive part of the pixel and the total pixel surface, has been increased because the analog hardware no longer occupies a space next to the light-sensitive layer, but is placed below it.

Sony announced three cmos image sensors on January 23 this year, which use the stacked cmos structure. Two of them, a 1/4″ sensor with 8 megapixels and a 1/3″ sensor with 13 megapixels, have RGBW pixels, with the white subpixel intended for better light sensitivity. The third stacked cmos image sensor is a 1/4″ variant with 8 RGB pixels. All three are BSI sensors, with the wiring layers under the photodiodes.