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Sub-micron pixels have been widely adopted in recent CMOS image sensors to implement high resolution cameras in small form factors, i.e. slim mobile-phones. Even with shrinking pixels, customers demand higher image quality, and the pixel performance must remain comparable to that of the previous generations. Conventionally, to suppress the optical crosstalk between pixels, a metal grid has been used as an isolation structure between adjacent color filters. However, as the pixel size continues to shrink to the sub-micron regime, an optical loss increases because the focal spot size of the pixel’s microlens does not downscale accordingly with the decreasing pixel size due to the diffraction limit: the light absorption inevitably occurs in the metal grid. For the first time, we have demonstrated a new lossless, dielectric-only grid scheme. The result shows 29 % increase in sensitivity and +1.2-dB enhancement in Y-SNR when compared to the previous hybrid metal-and-dielectric grid.

We experimentally demonstrate narrowband (Q∼40) thermal emission in the middle-wavelength infrared region and its electrical control at a temperature of 500°C using GaN/AlGaN multiple quantum wells and photonic crystals.

We discuss the capacity of certain binary input, ternary output, memoryless communication channels that arise in optical fiber communication (OFC). By using the Kuhn-Tucker condition we provide analytic solutions for channel capacity, under certain conditions. Numerical capacity results are provided along with closed form approximations, which accurately mimic capacity behavior, under all conditions.