The Volatile Chemist
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Digital Cameras as chemical source
Well, in attempt to get a digital camera w/o lenses (Just the little sensor with the lenses taken off) I broke an old digital camera of mine. As for
chemical sources, it seems like the color filter array (the thing that "sees" stuff) would have some rather exotic chemicals (See this image: http://www.mac-forums.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/se... ), and be worth tearing apart despite it's size (Mine's a little over 1
cm2). I looked into it, but couldn't find chemical compositions (It has to be made of something interesting, it's sparkly
 If you could find or know something on the subject that'd be great!
The other item was an LCD screen.
In terms of how to extract things (probably some metals) I was thinking an acid bath or bleach (I know, it's one of the few relatively strong reagents
I have...)
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thesmug
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The LCD is probably not useful. The sensor might have some rare earth or transition metals, but in insanely low concentration.
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WolfPack
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Sorry for my bad english.
thesmug is right. Most of the CCD chip is silicon, with phosphorus/boron/arsenic as dopants to make some zones of the silicon substrate ('wafer')
either p-type (positive, it means, there are more holes than electrons on the silicon lattice, you can achieve this by adding boron, for example.) or
n-type. It will also contain some copper or aluminium at the interconnects, which are tiny wires between the transistors in common Integrated
Circuits, or photodiodes' gates in a CCD chip. (See CCD layout 1 and CCD layout 2 for more info).
The rainbow of colors you are seeing is due to the color filter or by light interference caused by the tiny structures of the chip; this is the same
effect you normally see in the aluminium layer of a CD or DVD or in a diffraction grating.
LCD displays will have some ITO (indium-tin oxide) as this is one of the few materials which can be used to create transparent electrodes, like
graphene and AZO (aluminium zinc oxide), but the last ones are pretty uncommon (graphene has a very high sheet resistance and AZO degrades very easily
with moisture, as those electrodes' thickness are typically). They will also contain some material acting as liquid crystal (such as the mixtures of
cholesterol esters cholesteryl nonanoate, Cholesteryl oleyl carbonate and Cholesteryl benzoate, used sometimes in colour-changing wine bottle
thermometers such as this, or mixtures of 4-butyl-4'-methoxyazoxybenzene and 4-methoxy-4'-butylazoxybenzene for commercial LCD displays, sold as Merck licristal N4).
Have a look at this link.
All of these materials (except silicon and glass) in very small quantities, of course.
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The Volatile Chemist
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Interesting!
Thanks! How about CdS sensors? If I bathed some in Sulfuric acid, could I get some cadmium sulfide, or no...?
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