Embodiments related to the manufacturing of an imager device and an imager device are disclosed. Embodiments associated with methods of an imager device are also disclosed.

A demodulation pixel improves the charge transport speed and sensitivity by exploiting two effects of charge transport in silicon in order to achieve the before-mentioned optimization. The first one is a transport method based on the CCD gate principle. However, this is not limited to CCD technology, but can be realized also in CMOS technology. The charge transport in a surface or even a buried channel close to the surface is highly efficient in terms of speed, sensitivity and low trapping noise. In addition, by activating a majority carrier current flowing through the substrate, another drift field is generated below the depleted CCD channel. This drift field is located deeply in the substrate, acting as an efficient separator for deeply photo-generated electron-hole pairs. Thus, another large amount of minority carriers is transported to the diffusion nodes at high speed and detected.

An imaging device having a three-dimensional integration structure is provided. A first structure including a transistor including silicon in an active layer or an active region and a second structure including an oxide semiconductor in an active layer are fabricated. After that, the first and second structures are bonded to each other so that metal layers included in the first and second structures are bonded to each other; thus, an imaging device having a three-dimensional integration structure is formed.

A matrix-addressed system includes a system substrate and an array of pixels arranged in rows and columns disposed on the system substrate. A column-control circuit provides information to or receives information from the pixels. The column-control circuit includes a separate column-driver circuit connected to each column of pixels that provides information in common to all of the pixels in the column or receives information in common from all of the pixels in the column. A row-select circuit likewise disposed on the system substrate includes a serial shift register having a number of row storage elements equal to or larger than the number of rows in the array of pixels. Each row storage element in the shift register has a row-select line connected to all of the pixels in a row.

A solid-state image pickup device capable of suppressing the generation of dark current and/or leakage current is provided. The solid-state image pickup device has a first substrate provided with a photoelectric converter on its primary face, a first wiring structure having a first bonding portion which contains a conductive material, a second substrate provided with a part of a peripheral circuit on its primary face, and a second wiring structure having a second bonding portion which contains a conductive material. In addition, the first bonding portion and the second bonding portion are bonded so that the first substrate, the first wiring structure, the second wiring structure, and the second substrate are disposed in this order. Furthermore, the conductive material of the first bonding portion and the conductive material of the second bonding portion are surrounded with diffusion preventing films.

A solid-state imaging device in which a pixel circuit formed on the first surface side of a semiconductor substrate is shared by a plurality of light reception regions and second surface side of the semiconductor substrate is the light incident side of the light reception regions. The second surface side regions of the light reception regions are arranged at approximately even intervals and the first surface side regions of the light reception regions e are arranged at uneven intervals. Respective second surface side regions and first surface side regions are joined in the semiconductor substrate so that the light reception regions extend from the second surface side to the first surface side of the semiconductor substrate.

An image sensor with a pinned photodiode includes a photodiode formed in a substrate by implanting dopants of a first type through one or more dielectric layers formed over the substrate. A pinning layer for the photodiode may be formed by implanting dopants of a second type through the same one or more dielectric layers. The pinning layer may be formed over a photodiode region of the substrate. The concentration of dopants of the second type may have a maximum value in dielectric layers over the photodiode that exceeds the concentration of dopants of the second type in the substrate below. The photodiode and pinning layer may both be formed by implanting ions of the first and second type respectively through a dielectric layer formed after etching away a portion of another dielectric layer, having a different thickness, and having different optical transmission properties than the another dielectric layer.

A method for designing a photodetector comprising an array of pixels: selecting at a material composition for the photodetector; determining a configuration of at least one pixel in the array of pixels using a computer simulation, each pixel comprising an active region and a diffractive region, and a photodetector/air interface through which light enters, the computer simulation operating to process different configurations of the pixel to determine an optimal configuration for a predetermined wavelength or wavelength range occurring when waves reflected by the diffractive element form a constructive interference pattern inside the active region to thereby increase the quantum efficiency of the photodetector. An infrared photodetector produced by the method.

The present disclosure relates to a solid-state image pickup device, a manufacturing method, and an electronic apparatus, which can obtain high charge transfer efficiency from a photoelectric conversion unit to a floating diffusion layer. The floating diffusion layer is arranged in a rectangular shape so as to surround a gate electrode of a vertical transistor whose groove portion is rectangular. A reset drain is formed so as to be adjacent to the floating diffusion layer through a reset gate. A potential of the floating diffusion layer is reset to the same potential as that of the reset drain by applying a predetermined voltage to the reset gate. It is possible to apply the present disclosure to, for example, a CMOS solid-state image pickup device used in an image pickup device such as a camera.

An ion sensor includes a sensing section that accumulates signal charges, an ion-sensitive membrane that changes the amount of signal charges which can be accumulated in the sensing section, a vertical transfer section that reads and transfers the signal charges, a reference electrode that defines a reference potential in order to determine a potential of the measurement target, and a voltage control section that changes a reference electrode voltage in association with a drive voltage for operating the ion sensor.