ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,550,517, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).
"Same focal plane pixel design for RGB-IR image sensors" was invented by Hong Wei Lee (San Jose, Calif.) and Oray O. Cellek (Los Altos, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sensor module includes a silicon substrate. A set of isolation walls defines, in the silicon substrate, an array of silicon-based image sensor pixels and an array of cavities. An infrared (IR)-sensitive material in the array of cavities forms an array of IR sensor pixels in a same focal plane as the array of silicon-based image sensor pixels."
The patent was filed on Sept. 22, 2022, under ...