Abstract
The increasing miniaturization and resolution of image sensors bring challenges to conventional optical elements such as spectral filters and polarizers, the properties of which are determined mainly by the materials used, including dye polymers. Recent developments in spectral filtering and optical manipulating techniques based on nanophotonics have opened up the possibility of an alternative method to control light spectrally and spatially. By integrating these technologies into image sensors, it will become possible to achieve high compactness, improved process compatibility, robust stability and tunable functionality. In this Review, recent representative achievements on nanophotonic image sensors are presented and analyzed including image sensors with nanophotonic color filters and polarizers, metamaterial‐based THz image sensors, filter‐free nanowire image sensors and nanostructured‐based multispectral image sensors. This novel combination of cutting edge photonics research and well‐developed commercial products may not only lead to an important application of nanophotonics but also offer great potential for next generation image sensors beyond Moore's Law expectations.
Highlights
Digital image sensors (IS) that convert variable light intensities into electrical signals and constitute an image are important tool for the applications including photography, video imaging, condition monitoring and machine vision
In addition to the color filtering technique, other light manipulating requirements such as polarization and phased arrays based on nanophotonics have been proposed and demonstrated recently, with the potential for applications in image forming devices.[8,9,10]
ISs using nanophotonic color filters made by various integration methods are reviewed in Section 3, where the size effect and the spatial crosstalk, considering the practical application in IS, are discussed
Summary
The increasing miniaturization and resolution of image sensors bring challenges to conventional optical elements such as spectral filters and polarizers, the properties of which are determined mainly by the materials used, including dye polymers. Recent developments in spectral filtering and optical manipulating techniques based on nanophotonics have opened up the possibility of an alternative method to control light spectrally and spatially. By integrating these technologies into image sensors, it will become possible to achieve high compactness, improved process compatibility, robust stability and tunable functionality. In this Review, recent representative achievements on nanophotonic image sensors are presented and analyzed including image sensors with nanophotonic color filters and polarizers, metamaterialbased THz image sensors, filter-free nanowire image sensors and nanostructured-based multispectral image sensors. This novel combination of cutting edge photonics research and well-developed commercial products may lead to an important application of nanophotonics and offer great potential for generation image sensors beyond Moore’s Law expectations
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