What make one sensor better than another?

Hi,

As far as IQ goes. What physically about the sensor and/or internal circuitry makes one sharper or capture better colors? Any good websites I can read about this more indepth?

Thanks for the help.
Adam

Photosite diameter is important as this affects the amount of light collected which has a bearing on the signal to noise ratio. Also, the DIGIC11 processor has better performance than the original DIGIC processor.

I see. That's a good start. Thanks.

a good resource
http://www.canon.com/c​amera-museum/

As mentioned detector size (affects color and intensity values (AKA gray scale) the most

also detector densisty (affects resolution or sharpness),
bayer filter versus processing algortihm (affects color and resolution),
CCD versus CMOS, (affects power used, speed, and cost mostly)
the materials used in the sensor (affects sensitivity to color mostly),
micro lenses (affects light gathering ability),
availabilty of lenses to use that sensor (affects all light related issues - if only crappy lenses are available then this limits the sensor),
photon well depth of the photosites (affects intensity values even more then detector size, but not color so much).

All of the above and probably a few I am missing goes into what makes one sensor better then another.

Just my experience,