New Light Developments At Panasonic

Panasonic has developed 'micro colour splitters' to separate the light that falls on image sensors by exploiting light's wavelike properties.
The group says the application of the technology to image sensors allows bright colour images to be achieved even under low-light conditions.
This development aims to make colour filters unnecessary by using the micro colour splitters that control the diffraction of light at a microscopic level. Panasonic says it has achieved approximately double the colour sensitivity in comparison with conventional sensors that use colour filters.
Image sensors are used in devices like smartphones, digital still cameras and video cameras, as well in security, vehicle parking, office, and healthcare applications.
Conventional colour image sensors use a Bayer array, in which a red, green, or blue light-transmitting filter is placed above each sensor. These filters block 50 - 70% of the incoming light before it even reaches the sensor. Panasonic has developed a new technology that can be applied to existing or future sensors to enable them to capture uniquely vivid colour images.
The developed technology has the following features:
1. Using colour alignment, which can use light more efficiently, instead of colour filters, vivid colour photographs can be taken at half the light levels needed by conventional sensors.
2. Micro colour splitters can simply replace the colour filters in conventional image sensors, and are not dependent on the type of image sensor (CCD1 or CMOS2) underneath.
3. Micro colour splitters can be fabricated using inorganic materials and existing semiconductor fabrication processes.
This development is based on the following new technology:
1. A unique method of analysis and design based on wave optics that permits fast and precise computation of wave-optics phenomena.
2. Device optimisation technologies for creating micro colour splitters that control the phase of the light passing through a transparent and highly-refractive plate-like structure to separate colours at a microscopic scale using diffraction.
3. Layout technologies and unique algorithms that allow highly sensitive and precise colour reproduction by combining the light that falls on detectors separated by the micro colour splitters and processing the detected signals.
www.panasonic.co.uk