CCD camera project

In recent years, CCD sensors have been displaced by CMOS sensors in consumer electronics. ON Semi closed the ex Kodak fab in Rochester in mid-2020, after Sony had shut down their CCD business already in 2015. There are, however, still a few companies left which develop CCD sensors, probably mostly for low-volume scientific applications. Among these are e2v and Hamamatsu. As a result, you can sometimes find cheap surplus CCD sensors on ebay which cost thousands of dollars a few years ago. Here are some examples:

 

Kodak KAF-09000-ABA 3056x3056 12µm pixels, 110 ke- saturation signal, peak QE 64%, and Kodak KAF-09001-ABA 3056x3056 12µm pixels, 110 ke- saturation signal, peak QE 70%

Kodak KAF-16801E 4096x4096 9µm pixels, 70% peak QE, 55 ke-

e2v CCD57 512x512 13µm BSI pixels, 120 ke- saturation signal, frame transfer architecture

e2v CCD207 1632x1608 16µm pixels, L3Vision (electron multiplying) sensor

My goal is to learn about driving and reading-out CCD sensors, starting with the KAF-1401 sensor, and then iteratively improving the electronics. May be, with the advances e.g. in AD converters, FPGAs, low-noise power supplies etc., it is possible today to get a better performance from CCD sensors than was possible say 20 years ago, for example by using a high-speed ADC and digital signal processing to perform the CDS.

CCD test board