Hemispherical image sensor development for wide FOV imaging

摘要

Curved image sensors offer a new degree of freedom in optical system design that promise low-cost, small-volume solutions for wide field-of-view imaging. Stretchable polymer backplanes can provide the high-density of interconnects and tolerate the large deformations needed to transform planar, wafer-based image sensors into shapes with large nonzero Gaussian curvature. Here we demonstrate a thermoformable backplane based on glycolated polyethylene terephthalate (PETg) that can be deformed to a 98° spherical cap with 0.5" radius. We introduce a process to integrate such backplanes with a CMOS image sensor and release the circuit from the wafer to form a monolithically integrated image sensor that can be thermoformed to the desired shape.