8-Megapixel CMOS Sensor

Today Micron Technology unveiled a new imaging chip that could help the company expand into the digital camera market. Micron already dominates the mobile phone market. Its CMOS — complementary metal-oxide semiconductor — image sensors are used in one-third of the camera phones on the market. But Micron is a smaller player in the digital camera market because most mainstream digital cameras are made with CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) sensor which typically captures better images than CMOS sensors do. But the quality of CMOS sensors is catching up, and analysts expect more digital cameras to use CMOS because the chips are cheaper to make.

Micron announced it will be the first company to market an 8-megapixel CMOS image sensor that is the same size as most image chips used in digital cameras on the market. The new chip also will enable digital cameras to shoot at 30 frames per second and take video that can be played on high-definition television. Micron was able to produce the 8-megapixel chip because it reduced its pixel size to 1.75 microns. Most companies use 2.2-micron pixels to make image sensors now and so are much larger in size.

Because of its high resolution, the sensor captures large, crisp pictures (11-inch by 14-inch) or can be used to zoom-in and print just a portion of the image without sacrificing image quality.
Micron expects to begin mass producing the new chip in the first quarter of 2007. Additional information about Micron Imaging can be found at http://www.micron.com/products/imaging .

Freescale's Flash Memory

Flash memory, a popular form of information storage device nowadays, is a nonvolatile form of memory and it does not need any power to store information. Flash devices store information by applying an electric field to a polycrystalline silicon at the center of a transistor (termed "floating gate") . This is surrounded by an insulating material that needs to be relatively thick so that small defects in floating gate don't allow the charge to leak out. So, today's flash devices like 4GB iPod Nano still carry lot of inactive material in it.

Freescale Semiconductor of Austin, TX (a Motorola spinoff) is all set to change this scenario. This week the company announced the application of a technology based on nanoscale materials to develop a new generation of flash memory that will be half the size of conventional flash devices and could cost much less. The new technology will replace the solid silicon gate with a large number of tiny silicon crystals separated by little amount of insulation. In this configuration, the charge may leak from only a couple of neighboring nanocrystals but will keep most of the stored charge intact. With much reduced amount of needed insulation, the memory may occupy only half as much space. This means a flash-based gadget will be able to contain twice as many songs.

Freescale has already demonstrated a 24-megabit flash device using these nanoscale materials. Commercial products of these flash memory cards would be available by the end of 2008, the company said.