US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on April 7 for "Pixel shielding using air gaps" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,598,831, issued on April 7, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Pixel shielding using air gaps" was invented by ChunHao Lin (Tainan City, Taiwan), Yun-Wei Cheng (Taipei City, Taiwan), Kuo-Cheng Lee (Tainan City, Taiwan) and Chien Nan Tu (Kaohsiung City, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A shielding structure of air gaps, formed on a grid structure between pixel sensors in a pixel array, reduces crosstalk. Efficiency and signal-to-noise ratio of the pixel sensors is increased because crosstalk is reduced. The shielding structure also increases quantum efficiency of the pixel array because th...