Patent ID: 7615414

Claim:
A method of fabricating a dental intraoral radiological image sensor, comprising the following steps: combining a semiconductor wafer for the collective production of a structure; bearing a matrix of photosensitive detectors integrated into the wafer, and a fiber-optic plate fixed by wafer bonding, thinning the semiconductor wafer in a step subsequent to the formation of the image detection circuits on the wafer, and producing external access contact pads on that face of the wafer which is not fixed to the fiber plate, said contact pads being for controlling the circuits and for receiving image signals coming from the sensor, the fiber-optic plate having a thickness such that the fiber-optic plate provides most of the mechanical integrity of the structure once the wafer has been thinned, and does so right to the end of the collective fabrication, the assembled structure including the wafer and the plate being subsequently diced into individual chips.