A new supplier of CMOS image sensors has been launched in Antwerp, Belgium, by five former senior members of FillFactory, which Cypress acquired in 2004.
The new company, Cmosis, will specialise in designing and producing turnkey image sensors. It will initially concentrate on providing custom solutions for medical, machine vision, motion analysis, space, biometric and defence applications, with the prospect of building a standard product portfolio within the next couple of years.
The image sensors will feature some key technological developments to help the products better suit these hi-tech industries. ‘We feel we have developed some intellectual property that makes us very competitive,’ Tim Baeyens, one of Cmosis’s founders, told imveurope.com
These advancements include a new pixel design with a larger fill factor than previous sensors, which increases the proportion of the pixel that is sensitive to light to reduce the signal-to-noise ration of the sensors. The group has also developed column analogue-to-digital converters which allows high-speed imaging while still maintaining excellent bit-depth.
Other developments include time delay integration for the CMOS sensors – a feature commonly found in CCD sensors - which allows blur-free imaging of moving objects.
‘We can achieve a similar sensitivity to CCD sensors with all the advantages of CMOS sensors, such as the ability to add logic directly on the sensor, without a separate circuit board,’ said Baeyens.
The company plans to serve customers in Europe and the USA from its headquarters in Belgium, and it has already formed an agreement with Global Alliance in Japan to serve the Asian market. It received its first round of financing from Capital-E, a Belgian venture capitalist that provides early-stage capital for electronics companies.
