Photoelectric conversion element and solid-state imaging device

A solid-state imaging device merged in a single semiconductor chip, comprising:

• a depletion-layer extension-promotion region having an upper layer of a first conductivity type;
• a pixel-array area having an array of a plurality of pixels merged in the semiconductor chip, each of the pixels including:
• a photoelectric conversion layer of the first conductivity type in contact with the upper layer of the depletion-layer extension-promotion region, having a lower impurity concentration than the upper layer;
• a surface-buried region of a second conductivity type buried in a part of an upper portion of the photoelectric conversion layer, configured to implement a photodiode together with the photoelectric conversion layer;
• a well region of the first conductivity type buried in another part of the upper portion of the photoelectric conversion layer, having higher impurity concentration than the photoelectric conversion layer;
• a charge-accumulation region of the second conductivity type buried in a part of an upper portion of the well region, configured to accumulate signal charges temporally;
• a plurality of intra-pixel circuit-elements merged in a part of the well region, configured to implement a circuit for reading out the signal charges from the charge-accumulation region;
• and
• an injection-blocking element having a tab-region of the second conductivity type for dividing the well region into no less than two at least at a part of the well region, configured to block injection of non-signal charges having opposite conductivity type to the signal charges from the well region into the photoelectric conversion layer,
• a peripheral-circuit area merged in the semiconductor chip around the pixel-array area, configured to drive the pixels and process signals from the pixels,
• wherein, in each of the pixels, an entire range intended as a signal-charge generation-region in the photoelectric conversion layer is depleted by a voltage applied to the upper layer.