Patent ID: 7638826

Claim:
An imaging device comprised of a plurality of unit cells disposed therein, the plurality of unit cells being arranged in a row and column arrangement, and each unit cell including: a plurality of photoelectric conversion regions; a plurality of floating diffusion regions provided corresponding to the plurality of photoelectric conversion regions, respectively; a plurality of MOS transistors, wherein each of the plurality of MOS transistors transfers signal charges of a corresponding one of the plurality of photoelectric conversion regions to a corresponding one of the plurality of floating diffusion regions; a common amplifier having an input connected to the plurality of floating diffusion regions and amplifying signals transferred to the plurality of floating diffusion regions from the plurality of photoelectric conversion regions; and a common reset transistor, which resets the input of the common amplifier, wherein each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion regions of a unit cell is disposed at a first pitch in a column direction, each gate electrode of the plurality of MOS transistors of a unit cell is disposed at a second pitch in the column direction, and each of the plurality of floating diffusion regions of a unit cell is disposed at a third pitch, such that the first pitch, the second, and the third pitch are equal to each other, and wherein, for a unit cell, each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion regions of the unit cell is disposed at a fourth pitch in a row direction, each gate electrode of the plurality of MOS transistors of the unit cell is disposed at a fifth pitch in the row direction, and each of the plurality of floating diffusion regions is disposed at a sixth pitch in the row direction, such that the fourth pitch, the fifth pitch, and the sixth pitch are equal to each other, and wherein, for photoelectric conversion regions that are adjacent along the column direction, a common amplifier and a common reset transistor are disposed between the adjacent photoelectric conversion regions along the column direction, and, for photoelectric conversion regions that are adjacent along the row direction, a floating diffusion region is disposed between the adjacent photoelectric conversion regions along the row direction.