Spatial optical crosstalk in CMOS image sensors integrated with plasmonic color filters

Imaging resolution of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor (CIS) keeps increasing to approximately 7k x 4k. As a result, the pixel size shrinks down to sub-2 mu m, which greatly increases the spatial optical crosstalk. Recently, plasmonic color filter was proposed as an alternative to conventional colorant pigmented ones. However, there is little work on its size effect and the spatial optical crosstalk in a model of CIS. By numerical simulation, we investigate the size effect of nanocross array plasmonic color filters and analyze the spatial optical crosstalk of each pixel in a Bayer array of a CIS with a pixel size of 1 mu m. It is found that the small pixel size deteriorates the filtering performance of nanocross color filters and induces substantial spatial color crosstalk. By integrating the plasmonic filters in the low Metal layer in standard CMOS process, the crosstalk reduces significantly, which is compatible to pigmented filters in a state-of-the-art backside illumination CIS. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America