Monochrome sensor conversion... seeking advise

I have allready removed the cover glas from the sensor of a nikon V1 with a hot air rework station.

Now I want to remove the Bayer filter.

I would like some response with advise from people how did a successfull conversion.

What solvents or abrasive cleaners did you use? What tools did you use?

Did you us a demosaicing software? How did you process the files?

Thanks for any advise.

I've never heard of anyone doing this conversion themselves it is a VERY major job.

Removing the hot mirror is fairly common, going beyond that is asking a lot!

Confession: The last time I had to do this was 10 years ago.  So maybe dated info.  But this is a no-harm, no foul "better living through chemistry" method that may help.

Acetone, benzene, gasoline, zylene paint thinners will dissolve several of the classes of polymers that microlenses lenses and CFA resist material are made from.  It will not attack the underlying silicon substrate or SiO later that may also have been applied as a hard coating.

You can easily test this.   Make a small disk out of white paper, about the size of a dime.  Place this on the center of the sensor.  A drop at a time, add your [ favorite solvent  name here ] till the paper is saturated, and the solvent is kept in contact with the sensor.  As the solvent evaporates, add another drop to keep is sopping wet.  Whatever keeps the solvent in contact with the surface but not flooding the rest of the sensor.

If you are a Nervous Nelly type or using a smelly solvent like gasoline, or have a twitch, do this OUTSIDE - otherwise it is surely harmful to you, your marriage, your liver, and olfactory facilities.

Keep it "topped off" for a while, like 5-15 minutes.   Then test with the Q-Tip.  The coatings should slough off.    One of these solvents will take care of business.

I don't like the scratching off method as mishaps can occur.  It works, per YouTube.   With chemicals, you can always resort to scratching if they fail.

Just the solvent absorbing into the plastic will make it swell which usually de-laminates it from the substrate.

BobORama wrote:

Confession: The last time I had to do this was 10 years ago. So maybe dated info. But this is a no-harm, no foul "better living through chemistry" method that may help.

Acetone, benzene, gasoline, zylene paint thinners will dissolve several of the classes of polymers that microlenses lenses and CFA resist material are made from. It will not attack the underlying silicon substrate or SiO later that may also have been applied as a hard coating.

Benzene is a very nasty chemical to play with - very carcinogenic, so that It's concentration in many hydrocarbons is controlled to under 1ppm.

Toluene or Xylene (not zylene) are better options - and definitely do it in a well ventilated location, all of them have health hazards. Gasoline is probably more easily available and will typically contain about 30% of either Toluene or Xylene.

Thanks BobORama and petrochemist, good information and advice.

Before I read your response I allready tried the abrasive method. Well, with partial success.

As you can see, the sensor is not fully dead yet. I scratched the sensor. Also I must have damaged some of the gold wires. And since I removed the hot mirror filter, which is quite thick, the AF is off. The exposure is off also.

This is not a big loss, since I used a sensor from a broken camera I bought through Ebay. I will try to get another one for cheap.

The next sensor I will treat with Toluene.

I will post again, if there is progress.

Bayer Filter and micro lenses partially scratched off a Nikon V1 sensor.

Meuh wrote:

Any reason why you wouldn't buy a Sigma Merrill and use that in B/W selecting the blue channel only?

I know about the marrills and using the blue channel for B/W, but...

Merrills cost 400-500 EUR here in Germany used, the V1 I got for 80 EUR and I can change lenses.

Johannes Zander wrote:

Thanks BobORama and petrochemist, good information and advice.

Of course God only knows what fresh hell that will cause.  But we are rooting for you!

I like the bottom of the picture, reminds me of poorly processed Polaroid film.

In terms of the wires, they may just be shorted.  Get a 10x loupe and inspect them.  If any are touching each other you can separate them gently with a fine sewing needle.  You may be able to salvage they can take a fair amount of abuse.

I will post again, if there is progress.

Bayer Filter and micro lenses partially scratched off a Nikon V1 sensor.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/jz_in_germany/

On the next one protect the wires with epoxy.

Strong-Bond 113 you can get in 2.5 or 5 gram pouches cheap.  This produces a very hard plastic when cured at room temperature - do not use the elevated temperature cure which reduces cross linking and also hardness.   Wait a week before applying solvents.   It might also protect things well enough so you can be more aggressive with your scraping, which actually looked like it was working.

The astronomer is bolder than we think !

http://www.jtwastronomy.com/tutorials/debayer.html

Part I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huTFrjfBzEw

Enginel wrote:

khunpapa wrote:

The astronomer is bolder than we think !

http://www.jtwastronomy.com/tutorials/debayer.html

Part I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huTFrjfBzEw

Why would they do this, because they remove CFA with microlenses (on front-illuminated sensor), QE will surely be not any better than it was

Astronomers are working with dim light, and for nebulae are also needing a narrow wavelength range. Removing the Bayer filter allows all the sensor to be used for capturing those elusive photons, rather than just blocking around 3/4 of them (for Ha imaging at 626nm, with the hotmirror removed). Even Green O-III nebulae would have 1/2 the photons blocked by the Bayer array.

With exposures often totaling hours rather than just seconds a 4 fold sensitivity gain is understandably desirable.

bclaff wrote:

Meuh wrote:

Any reason why you wouldn't buy a Sigma Merrill and use that in B/W selecting the blue channel only?

Photons of different energy (wavelengths) penetrate the silicon to a different depth.
Using only the blue (top) plane would not capture all the visible wavelength; only predominantly blue. You'd miss the green and red wavelengths that penetrate deeper.

The top layer is miscalled "blue". It is panchromatic with a blue bias. There is no filter in front of it to remove the red and green, but some of the green and red photons do pass through it.

I was able to take three photos through Kodak colour separation filters, convert them all to monochrome as "100% blue", and recombine them in Photoshop to give a normal full colour image.