Quantum Film could replace CMOS?

[bradleygibson]

Somewhere on their site you can see a diagram of what they are doing.  The quantum dot film just lays over the circuit and then filters  stack on it like normal.  Mostly what they are doing is moving the sensel wires to a lower layer but apparently the film is twice as efficient at collecting light than current cmos tech.
edit: see here http://invisageinc.com/staging/img/sb_QuantumTechnology.png

Aha--thanks, Eric.  They do answer my color question in that diagram you linked to.

I'm not nano-technologist--I am a believer in the adage that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", and a somewhat vague announcement of a 4x improvement over all current CMOS technology AND a cost reduction to boot just seems like it could be too good to be true.

More detailed substantiation would certainly help with my sketicism...  This stuff is supposed to be in mobile phones later this year.  I AM quite familiar with hardware development cycles of consumer electronics, and it is hard to see how they plan to do this, unless they had chips in the hands of the designers a year ago.

Anyway nothing is impossible (merely improbable!), so we'll see.

I hope they deliver, though--I would love even better SNR and cheaper, easier-to-manufacture sensors!

[EricWHiss]

Aha--thanks, Eric.  They do answer my color question in that diagram you linked to.

I'm not nano-technologist--I am a believer in the adage that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", and a somewhat vague announcement of a 4x improvement over all current CMOS technology AND a cost reduction to boot just seems like it could be too good to be true.

More detailed substantiation would certainly help with my sketicism...  This stuff is supposed to be in mobile phones later this year.  I AM quite familiar with hardware development cycles of consumer electronics, and it is hard to see how they plan to do this, unless they had chips in the hands of the designers a year ago.

Anyway nothing is impossible (merely improbable!), so we'll see.

I hope they deliver, though--I would love even better SNR and cheaper, easier-to-manufacture sensors!

What's interesting is the same company is looking at using the same technology for solar cells and other devices.  Apparently the scale of the dots helps with collection efficiency due to quantum effects and also the portion of spectrum collected can be tuned by the size of the dots - so they can make a IR only collector for example or exclude IR using the appropriate size dots.   They are claiming high efficiency for solar collecting too.   Most of these types of claims turn out to be unrealized when the stuff comes out off the production line because of various compromises but still even one stop efficiency gain could be an advantage.  The biggest thing in all of this is the cost savings of the film over traditional sensor tech and while its being touted as an advantage for camera phones - I think the cost savings could make a much stronger impact in big sensors.  How about a 4x5 sensor for view cameras or finally a 6x6 for my rollei?