Science Daily August 26, 2022
To reduce the energy cost associated with transferring data between the sensing and computing units, in-sensor computing approaches are being developed where images are processed within the photodiode arrays. However, such methods require electrostatically doped photodiodes where photocurrents can be electrically modulated or programmed, and this is challenging in current CMOS image sensors that use chemically doped silicon photodiodes. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, South Korea) developed in-sensor computing using electrostatically doped silicon photodiodes by fabricating thousands of dual-gate silicon p–i–n photodiodes, which were integrated into CMOS image sensors, at the wafer scale. With a 3 × 3 network of the electrostatically doped photodiodes, they demonstrated in-sensor image processing using seven different convolutional filters electrically programmed into the photodiode network…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Electrostatically doped silicon p–i–n photodiode. Credit: Nature Electronics volume 5, pages519–525 (2022)Â