ogl mentioned "black silicon" in
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/367269-post91.html.
So, I looked it up. There is a recent article about it (Oct 15) in Tom's hardware:
Black Silicon CMOS Sensors 100 Times More Sensitive - Tom's Hardware
And more about it is found here:
http://www.sionyx.com/mslns/Black_Silicon_Imaging_Technology.pdf
This is an interesting technology and commonly referred to as providing 100x improved sensitivity. I.e., making a 1µm pixel site behave as a conventional 10µm pixel would. Or making a P&S outperform a digital medium format in low light!
Being a physicist, let me provide some additional information making the above claim a false one.
What they (Sionyx Corp.) mean by 100x is a 10000% quantum efficiency. I.e., that one photon, on average, creates 100 electrons.
While this will dramatically reduce read-out noise, it basically only provides an amplification effect (like avalanche diodes) and will
not reduce the Shot noise (
Shot noise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Shot noise is the main source of noise in low light.
What
would reduce Shot noise though, is an increase of the fraction of photons which are detected at all, a number
traditionally called quantum efficiency and which is a number defined to be smaller than 100%. Sionyx Corp. doesn't quote this figure.
In lack of any additional information and in view of the fact that quantum efficiency is pretty good already (in some devices) and read-out noise can be minimized using more conventional technologies, I am led to conclude the following:
Black Silicon is interesting but
no break-thru technology.
The most break-thru like technology in the field would be one which detects individual photons and their energy (read color). It would minimize the Shot noise to what is feasible. The improvement would be significant but much smaller than 100x.
Last edited by falconeye; 10-18-2008 at 06:00 PM.
Reason: Silicon, not silicone ;)