WORKSHOP PAPER
Planar microlenses applied to SPAD pixels
Abstract
Wafer level planar microlenses are designed to improve the sensitivity of SPAD arrays, based on rigorous optical simulations. State of the art refractive microlens solution and designed planar microlenses: FZP microlenses and metamicrolenses, are implemented on STMicroelectronics 40nm CMOS testchips (32 ×32 SPAD array). Optical gain compared to the reference microlens of 1.3 and 1.9 are shown for FZP and metamicrolenses, respectively in characterization and simulation.Keywords
SPAD pixels, Planar microlenses, Optical simulations,References
1) J. Vaillant et al., "SPAD array sensitivity improvement by diffractive microlens", International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW), 2019. https://doi.org/10.60928/bl23-jmo6
2) L. Dilhan et al., "Planar microlenses for near infrared CMOS image sensors", Electronic Imaging, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2470-1173.2020.7.iss-144
3) S. Gnecchi et al., "Analysis of Photon Detection Efficiency and Dynamic Range in SPAD-Based Visible Light Receivers.", Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1109/jlt.2016.2550497
4) L. Dilhan and J. Vaillant, "Image sensor", US20210111211 A1 2021-04-15 [US20210111211]-FR3102007 A1 2021-04-16 [FR3102007]-CN112736100 A 2021-04-30 [CN112736100], 2019
5) Mahmoud Elsawy et al., "Global optimization of meta-surface designs using statistical learning methods", Scientific Reports, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-53878-9
6) Allen Taflove and S. Hagness, "Computational Electrodynamics: The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method, 3rd edition", 2005. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012170960-0/50046-3
7) Branko Grünbaum and Geoffrey C. Shepard, "Tilings by Regular Polygons. Patterns in the plane from Kepler to the present, including recent results and unsolved problems.", Mathematics magazine, 1977
