Patent ID: 7872286

Claim:
An image pickup device, comprising: a photoelectric conversion unit, which generates carriers by photoelectric conversion and which accumulates a part of said carriers; a floating diffusion region; a transfer transistor for transferring said part of said carriers into said floating diffusion region; an element isolation barrier surrounding said photoelectric conversion unit and including an impurity region that can be a barrier for said carriers; a reset transistor, which resets said floating diffusion region; a lateral direction overflow drain including an impurity region disposed between said photoelectric conversion unit and said drain and having an impurity density lower than that of said element isolation barrier; a transfer gate unit, which controls a gate voltage of said transfer transistor to be any of a first gate voltage, a second gate voltage, and a third gate voltage, wherein said first gate voltage is a voltage at which said transfer transistor is turned on and said part of said carriers is transferred, said second gate voltage is a voltage at which said transfer transistor is turned off, and said third gate voltage is between said first gate voltage and said second gate voltage and causes a remaining part of said carriers other than said part of said carriers to be divided into said floating diffusion region and said lateral direction overflow drain; and a pixel signal generating unit, which generates a pixel signal based on at least said remaining part of said carriers that have been transferred into said floating diffusion region in a period in which said gate voltage is controlled to be said third gate voltage.