Patent ID: 11860383
Assignee: OMNIVISION TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 15:
16. A flare-suppressing image sensor, comprising:
a semiconductor substrate having a pixel array that includes a first set of image- sensor pixels and a second set of image-sensor pixels;
a plurality of microlenses each (i) in a microlens plane above the semiconductor substrate, (ii) aligned to a respective one of the first set of image-sensor pixels, and (ii) having a width that is between a half micrometer and three micrometers;
a plurality of sub-microlens arrays each (i) in the microlens plane, (ii) aligned to a respective pixel of the second set of image-sensor pixels, and (iii) including multiple sub-microlenses each having a width that is less than a width of each of the plurality of microlenses; and
the plurality of microlenses including a first microlens aligned to a first pixel of the first set of image-sensor pixels,
a color filter array (CFA) between the microlens plane and the semiconductor substrate, wherein each filter of the CFA is one of a red filter, a green filter, a blue filter, a cyan filter, a magenta filter, a yellow filter, and a panchromatic filter;
the plurality of sub-microlens arrays including a first sub-microlens array that is (i) aligned to a second pixel, of the second set of image-sensor pixels, that is adjacent to the first pixel, and (ii) coplanar with the first microlens in a plane parallel to the pixel array.