Mobile Photography Soon To Get More Advanced With Quantum Dot Technology

Mobile Photography Soon To Get More Advanced With Quantum Dot Technology

It is possible that the picture you will click with your cameraphone will give much better clarity similar to a Camcorder in near future.

Well, it’s likely that Mobile photographers may have better equipped cellular phone cameras. A revolutionary technology known as quantum dots will be reason behind it. More than three years have been spent to make a proprietary film which will coat image sensors in the cell phone camera. This will allow more light to be captured and a resultant better image.

InVisage Technologies, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is the firm which is trying to bring in this revolutionary technology. This film will be a very rare commercial use of an exotic semiconductor material known as the quantum dot.

Jess Lee, the chief executive of InVisage, did say that the lab tests conducted by the company has assured him that in two years time cell phone companies will have better cameras to be sold in the market which will work about four times better than modern day cameras, especially in low light.

What’s prevalent now is image sensors in cell phone cameras allow silicon to capture light, which is further processed to get a picture. Now, the problem is these companies which make sensors are shrinking and tweaking the devices so that more light can be absorbed.

There are limitations of these cameras as when photos are taken in low light, and then the image produced is quite blurry.

“With the current techniques, you might have technology that’s 10 percent better two years from now,” Mr. Lee said. “The big guys have hit a brick wall, and it will only get harder and more expensive for them to fight it.”

InVisage did not try to change or refine the Silicon Technology, but what they did was to turn the quantum dots which build up a Quantum Film, that is a layer of semiconductor material gathering better light better than the silicon technology, Mr. Lee said.

Researchers have spent years focusing on quantum dots and they got little success in that. Quantum Dots are semiconductor particles about a nanometer or a billionth of a meter in size. Technology now has taken over as it controls the physical properties and makes the quantum dots behave in a certain way.

Researchers too have made the quantum dots with exotic materials and then tried to control its properties.

InVisage has not revealed how they managed to build their quantum dot, as they have decided to keep it as a company secret. There are vials of the quantum dots suspended in a liquid which might be essential process. Then it is spread over the top of an image sensor.

Mr. Lee also is hopeful that companies that produce image sensor chips can use the film and no major change will be required.  “We expect to start production 18 months from now,” Mr. Lee said.

This new technology, if it is in place then the current three-megapixel camera found in the Apple iPhone will be made into a 12-megapixel camera which shall work in different light conditions, Mr. Lee said.

NYTimes reports that Ken Salsman, the director of new technologies at Aptina, a major manufacturer of image sensors for cell phones, did agree upon the fact that silicon-based sensors had proved tough to advance.

Meanwhile, he said that Aptina is also coming up with new improved technology and InVisage might be “in for a very rude surprise.”

NYTimes also reports that Mr. Salsman still commended InVisage for innovation. “I am very excited to see what they’ve got,” he said. “Having a true change in performance never hurt the industry.”

Staff

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