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Sony · Display · Filed Nov 26, 2025 · USPTO published Jun 18, 2026 · Jun 18 release

Sony's New Patent Lets Camera Pixels Share Storage to Capture More Light

Sony is patenting a way to link neighboring pixel circuits in a camera sensor so they can pool their charge-storage capacity — a technique that could improve how well a sensor handles very bright or very dim scenes without losing detail.

By · Updated · 3 min read

Sony Patent: Shared Pixel Sensor Capacitor for Better Low-Light, figure from US 2026/0172705 A1
Figure from the official USPTO publication.
Publication number
US 2026/0172705 A1(US20260172705A1)
Applicant
Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation
Filed · Published
Nov 26, 2025 · Jun 18, 2026
Inventors
Luonghung Asakura
Status when we published
Waiting for an examiner
Document
1 claims
US classification
348/300
Parent application
Continuation of 18/679,827 (filed May 31, 2024)(18679827)

What Sony's linked pixel circuit actually does for your camera

Imagine your camera sensor is a grid of tiny light-collecting buckets. Each bucket can only hold so much light before it overflows — and once it overflows, detail is lost. In bright scenes, that's a real problem.

Sony's patent describes a design where two neighboring pixels can share a bigger, combined storage space. A small extra capacitor (think of it as an overflow tank) can be switched in when needed, so the pixels together can handle a wider range of light without clipping.

The clever part is how the circuit is wired. Rather than giving every single pixel its own overflow tank — which takes up space and costs power — two pixels share one, controlled by a series of tiny switches. It's a space-efficient way to give the sensor more flexibility depending on the lighting conditions you're shooting in.

How the floating diffusion and shared capacitor circuit works

The patent describes a light-detecting device built around two pixel circuits that can electrically cooperate. Each pixel contains a photodiode (the actual light sensor), a floating diffusion (a small node that temporarily stores the electrical charge the photodiode produces), and a set of transistors acting as switches.

The key innovation is a shared wiring path that connects the first floating diffusion to the second floating diffusion through a chain of switch transistors. By opening or closing those transistors, the circuit can merge the charge-storage capacity of both pixels into one larger pool.

A first capacitor sits at the end of this chain, tied to a reference voltage node. When switched in, it acts as an additional charge reservoir. The reset transistor in the first pixel circuit handles clearing the charge between exposures, draining both pixels' shared storage back to a known baseline.

  • FD addition: combining two floating diffusion nodes to increase total charge capacity
  • Selective capacitor switching: the extra capacitor is only connected when needed, preserving noise performance in normal conditions
  • Shared reset path: one reset transistor manages both pixel circuits through the linked wiring

What this means for low-light camera sensors in Sony devices

Camera sensors have always faced a trade-off: bigger pixels hold more light and handle dark scenes better, but larger pixels mean fewer of them fit on a chip, so resolution drops. Sony's approach tries to sidestep that trade-off by letting small pixels act like a bigger pixel when they need to — combining their storage on the fly.

For Sony, which supplies image sensors to Apple, Samsung, and many phone makers, incremental gains in dynamic range (the gap between the darkest and brightest detail a sensor can capture at once) translate directly into competitive advantage. A patent like this is a building block — not a finished product — but it fits a long pattern of Sony pushing sensor architecture forward one circuit trick at a time.

Source: US 2026/0172705 A1 at the USPTO (PDF). Full patent text and figures are in the official publication.

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