Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Passivation Strength Test

A Youtube video below shows the CFA removal process from Canon 350D DSLR sensor to turn it into a monochrome imager for astronomy:



And this video shows the process almost complete:



A picture showing the monochrome resolution improvement is posted on Fickr.

13 comments:

  1. Looking at this photo - I can't help but feel some pain for this imager and the effect that this scraping will have on it's quality.

    My suspicion is that the monochrome imager will now see a very "starry" night of defects when capturing images of the night sky.

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    Replies
    1. Actually, you can see these monochrome images on the Flickr link on the last line in the post. Not that many defects there. This has amazed me too.

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  2. What is austronomy? astronomy under an austerity budget?

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  3. This falls into the same category as using your Canon EOS 1D as a hammer. You could do that, but probably wouldn't want to...

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  4. That looks crazy. Surely a solvent soaked Q-Tip would be a "safer" method to remove the organic layers. I guess it shows how strong the thin CVD silicon oxide and nitride layers are in modern ic's

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  5. Uh I didn't know image sensors are actually
    lottery scratch tickets
    ;-)

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  6. Great way to sell cameras. Scratch and see if you're a lucky customer! I have heard of removing the IR filter from a cheapo camera to get a relatively cheap (and probably not very good) night vision device. Anyone try this?

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  7. What type of solvent would you use to do this chemically, hopefully a little more safely?

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  8. Sulphuric acid/peroxide mix, acetone, or carbitol (assuming you don't have an oxygen plasma available).

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  9. dichlorethane has been called in the list of solvents, at least for nikon Sensors.

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  10. Or, you could either A) buy a monochrome camera or B) buy any Sigma camera with a Foveon sensor and remove the IR cut filter behind the lens (then put it back to take color pictures again).

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  11. Hi, Great work!

    How did you remove the cover glass on the sensor?

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