DEMO: InVisage’s QuantumFilm enables gorgeous camera phone pictures

Based on a new kind of image sensor technology from chip startup InVisage Technologies, QuantumFilm can deliver mobile phone camera images that are four times sharper than today’s cameras, with twice the dynamic range, or the ability to have both dark and light features in the same picture.

No longer will you have to put up with a bulky camera with a long lens to get good quality pictures. If the iPhone used these chips, it would be able to take 12 megapixel pictures with better quality features, compared to the 3-megapixel pictures it can currently take. With such quality, many consumers might opt for carrying only camera phones.

Collected from: DEMO: InVisage’s QuantumFilm enables gorgeous camera phone pictures | VentureBeat

QuantumFilm Technology

Harnessing the power of custom-designed semiconductor materials, InVisage has created a new generation of QuantumFilm based image sensors. In the early days of photography film based cameras were used....

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Collected from: InVisage

Essentially, the technology works by adding a new finely tuned light-sensitive layer on top of the silicon chip, Lee said. That layer is more efficient at converting incoming light into electrical signals, and the light isn't partially blocked by a microprocessor's metallic layers, either.

[...]

The quantum-dot layer is sandwiched between conventional image sensor technology. One one side is conventional circuitry for reading data off an image sensor, and on the other is the color filter array that means each pixel receives only red, blue, or green light.

What is a quantum dot exactly? "It's a semiconductor particle made to be precisely nanometers in size. By controlling its size, you can change its core semiconductor property, called band gap," which is a specific amount of energy it takes to get an electron into a higher-energy state. QuantumFilm's materials are specifically tuned to be sensitive to the energy from the photons of visible light.

Conventional CMOS image sensors use the silicon semiconductor layer at the bottom of a chip to gather light, somewhat inefficiently. InVisage believes its QuantumFilm approach, which gathers light at the top layer with precisely made quantum dots in a thin film, is superior.

(Credit: InVisage)

Collected from: InVisage aims to remake camera sensor market | Deep Tech - CNET News