Patent ID: 7515184

Claim:
A solid-state image sensor which generates charge according to an amount of light received and outputs the generated charge, comprising: a plurality of photoelectric converters arranged in a matrix with rows and columns, each of the photoelectric converters operable to generate charge according to an amount of light received; a plurality of vertical transfer units, each of which is disposed along each column of the photoelectric converters and includes (a) a plurality of transfer electrodes and (b) charge storage units corresponding one-to-one with the transfer electrodes, each of the charge storage units operable to store the generated charge therein and transfer the stored charge to an adjacent charge storage unit according to a voltage applied to the corresponding transfer electrode; and a horizontal transfer unit disposed in a direction of the rows along an end side of the vertical transfer units in a charge transfer direction, wherein every 2n+1 vertical transfer units aligned next to each other in the row direction are incorporated into one vertical transfer group, where n is an integer of 1 or more, and, in n out of the 2n+1 vertical transfer units within each vertical transfer group, one or more predetermined transfer electrodes disposed close to the horizontal transfer unit are independent transfer electrodes unconnected with other transfer electrodes of the vertical transfer group, and wherein within the vertical transfer group, the transfer electrodes except the independent transfer electrodes are connected transfer electrodes connected with other transfer electrodes of the vertical transfer group, the connected transfer electrodes being applied with an in-phase voltage.