US Patent Issued to OmniVision Technologies on July 15 for "Image sensor operating in a photovoltaic mode" (Japanese, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,363,455, issued on July 15, was assigned to OmniVision Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Image sensor operating in a photovoltaic mode" was invented by Yoshiyuki Matsunaga (Kyoto, Japan), Keiji Mabuchi (Cupertino, Calif.) and Lindsay Grant (Campbell, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image sensor includes a sensor substrate and a circuit substrate. The sensor substrate includes a plurality of sensor substrate-side pixels. Each of the sensor substrate-side pixels includes a photodiode configured to operate in a photovoltaic mode, a reset transistor configured to reset the photodiode, and a pixel source follower transistor c...