Polarization-Analyzing CMOS Image Sensor With Monolithically Embedded Polarizer for Microchemistry Systems

This paper proposes and demonstrates a polarization-analyzing CMOS sensor based on image sensor architecture. The sensor was designed targeting applications for chiral analysis in a microchemistry system. The sensor features a monolithically embedded polarizer. Embedded polarizers with different angles were implemented to realize a real-time absolute measurement of the incident polarization angle. Although the pixel-level performance was confirmed to be limited, estimation schemes based on the variation of the polarizer angle provided a promising performance for real-time polarization measurements. An estimation scheme using 180 pixels in a 1 degrees step provided an estimation accuracy of 0.04 degrees. Polarimetric measurements of chiral solutions were also successfully performed to demonstrate the applicability of the sensor to optical chiral analysis.