Canon has filed a patent for their 3 layer Foveon sensor technology. According to Egami, Canon patent concerns a 3-layer image sensor that appears to be particularly sensitive to light.
Canon have been working on it since 2011. It hasn’t appeared in a camera and we haven’t heard anything but below are the patent details.
Canon Patent For Three Layer Foveon Sensor
Patent description (google translation)
- Patent Publication No. 2013-93553
- Publication date 2013.5.16
- Filing date 2011.10.4
- Imaging element of three-layer structure
- Photodiode deep layer (hereinafter, PD) in the charge is diffused into the substrate
- Thus sensitivity is poor red
- Canon patent
- I as a photonic crystal of irregular shape, the boundary surface of the PD of red or green,
- In the periodic structure of uneven spacing, less than twice the 1/4 times or more the wavelength of light, or I shall be two times or less 1/2 times or more
- Irregular shape has the properties to be spatially-localized or resonant light
- The incident light is diffracted, it combines with the light of the boundary plane, the resonant
- Prolonged exists than normal, the light becomes easy to be absorbed by the PD Thus
