News: Cheaper full frame cameras expected.

The news is actually almost a year old, but I only learned it today:


http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/semiconductor/products/semiconductor_equipment/steppers/fpa_5510iv_stepper#Specifications

The essential info is: "Field Size: 52mm x 34mm".

What does that mean?

Manufacturing half-size ("DX", APS-C) sensors is much cheaper because the masks fit in standard stepper machines. Manufacturing larger sensor means making many more passes and realignments, because the waffer cannot be insulated in one go. So one needs to insulate part of the design, change mask, re-align, insulate the second part, etc... Time consuming. Expensive. Very.

Full size sensors cost something like 10 to 20 times the price of half-size sensors.

The machine under the link can expose the size of a full-frame sensor in one go. So the price of full-size sensor will only be much cheaper.

The astute reader will have noticed that the manufacturer of the machine is Canon.

As technology advances it gets cheaper!

The D600 may be on the way estimated at $1,500!

Sorry to have awaken false hopes, but this message was in error. I overlooked an important detail which renders that machine unsuitable to manufacturing camera cmos sensors, the resolution is only 1.50µm.

Jerome Marot said:

Sorry to have awaken false hopes, but this message was in error. I overlooked an important detail which renders that machine unsuitable to manufacturing camera cmos sensors, the resolution is only 1.50µm.

Click to expand...

Well, Jerome, what size pixels do the phone cameras have at 8 MP?

Asher

I think he is referring to process resolution, not sensor resolution.

Yes, he was referring to process resolution, which needs to be much smaller than 1.5um in order to make CMOS sensors.

That Canon stepper is geared at doing rougher TSV processes (Through Silicon Via) which would provide connections from the circuitry that go out through the back side of the wafer, rather than through the front side. This is done to allow stacking of chips inside the same package.

It likely has a similar application to this announced Sony development .

Although in a case like that, the 1.5um resolution would still not be very good, since the TSV wafer would likely be the one with the fine pitch circuitry on it if you're doing back-side illumination.

If you're doing front-side, it would be the opposite, so maybe you make the pixels with TSVs and the support circuitry with more advanced equipment then sits on the backside of the pixel die.