Patent ID: 8208054

Claim:
A solid-state imaging device comprising on a semiconductor substrate: a plurality of photodiodes, disposed in a matrix (i, j), for converting light beams into signal charges and accumulating the signal charges; an electric charge transfer gate for reading out the signal charges accumulated in the photodiodes; a floating diffusion for converting into electric potentials the signal charges that are photoelectric-converted by the photodiodes and are read out by the electric charge transfer gate; a reset transistor for resetting the signal charges; and an amplifier transistor for amplifying the read out signal charges, the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor being shared by the plurality of photodiodes, wherein at least one of the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor is disposed in a clearance portion among the plurality of photodiodes sharing the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor, a distance between a centroid of a light sensing area of a first photodiode (i, j) included in the plurality of photodiodes and a centroid of a light sensing area of a second photodiode (i, j+1) included in the plurality of photodiodes is different from a distance between a centroid of a light sensing area of a photodiode (i+1, j) included in the plurality of photodiodes and a centroid of a light sensing area of a photodiode (i+1, j+1) included in the plurality of photodiodes, one of the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor is disposed between the first photodiode (i, j) and the second photodiode (i, j+1) in a common region in which the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor are shared, and another one of the reset transistor and the amplifier transistor, not disposed between the first photodiode (i, j) and the second photodiode (i, j+1), is disposed between a third photodiode (i+1, j+n) and a fourth photodiode (i+1, j+n+1), where n being +1.