Panasonic Corp. says that it has developed a technology to increase the sensitivity of image sensors such as CCD or CMOS by replacing the near-universal colour filter array with its newly-developed prism-like “Micro Color Splitters”to generate colour information.
The new colour- splitter technology directs all the incoming light to the sensor, instead of allowing half of the light, or more to be absorbed by the colour filter dyes in the conventional technology. Panasonic claims to have achieved approximately double the colour sensitivity in comparison to other conventional sensors that use the colour filter technology. This new device can be used both on CMOS or CCD image sensor.