Ceramic CCD/CIS Image Sensors
Package material is the entire decision — a white or gold ceramic body with gold-plated pins or a gold lid is $150–400/lb scrap and often a $200–4,000 component; a black plastic or flex-mounted module is worth nothing at any refiner.
How to spot it
Valuable: white/cream alumina or purple-brown sidebraze body with a glass or quartz window over a visible silicon die and gold-plated leads in DIP, LCC or PGA form, part-numbered KAF-, KAI-, ICX-, TC2xx, CCD97 or e2v CCD. Found in astronomy cameras, microscopes, spectrometers, machine-vision cameras, flatbed and drum scanners, professional camcorders, older DSLRs and satellite optics. Worthless: a 5–12 mm black lens barrel over a 6–10 mm flex tail with no visible die, from phones, webcams, doorbells and dashcams; likewise consumer CIS scanner bars.
Metal content
| Metal | Quantity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | 0.02–0.15 g per ceramic package ≈ 1.8 g/lb | Gold-plated leads, wire bonds, cavity floor and sometimes the lid. 15–45 packages per pound. Package geometry estimate |
| Gold | under 0.001 g per mobile/webcam module | BGA or CSP on flex — fractions of a cent, no scrap category exists |
| Base metal | Nd-Fe-B in VCM actuators, coated IR-cut glass | Not separately payable |
At 4 Aug 2026 spot prices that works out to $235 per pound of contained metal — Gold 1.8 g = $235. A refiner paying $270 returns about 115% of that, which is normal: refining costs money and the buyer takes a margin.
Safe removal
Working temperature: Desolder 330–360 °C; bulk board shake 250–300 °C
Ceramic packages are usually socketed or through-hole: desolder with a vacuum station at 330–360 °C with board preheat, or for scrap-only hot-air the whole board at 250–300 °C and shake the parts off. For resale handle the optical window like a lens — never touch it, blow with a bulb only, store in a lidded ESD box with desiccant. Never remove a sensor's cover glass; the die is bare silicon and one touch ends its value.
Hazards
NEVER grind, sand, file, saw, drill, abrasive-cut, sandblast, hammer, crush, shred, torch, melt or incinerate anything that might contain BeO. Sell or dispose of suspect parts intact. Broken beryllium parts are worth nothing; your lungs are worth everything.
The practical answer for nearly everyone: sort, concentrate, and sell to a licensed refiner. A good refiner recovers 85–98%, assays rather than guesses, pays on the assay, and takes the waste liability. Your edge as a scrapper is identification and sorting — not chemistry.
Don't let two magnet plates snap together across your fingers.
NEVER blow on, wipe with bare fingers, or brush away cut optical fibre.
NEVER grind, sand, saw or incinerate anything that might contain thorium or radium. Sealed sources stay sealed.
Before you scrap it
The common trap
Questions
How much gold is in ceramic ccd/cis image sensors?
Gold: 0.02–0.15 g per ceramic package ≈ 1.8 g/lb. Gold: under 0.001 g per mobile/webcam module. At current spot that is about $235 of contained metal per pound.
How do you identify ceramic ccd/cis image sensors?
Package material is the entire decision — a white or gold ceramic body with gold-plated pins or a gold lid is $150–400/lb scrap and often a $200–4,000 component; a black plastic or flex-mounted module is worth nothing at any refiner.
How do you remove ceramic ccd/cis image sensors safely?
Ceramic packages are usually socketed or through-hole: desolder with a vacuum station at 330–360 °C with board preheat, or for scrap-only hot-air the whole board at 250–300 °C and shake the parts off. For resale handle the optical window like a lens — never touch it, blow with a bulb only, store in a lidded ESD box with desiccant. Never remove a sensor's cover glass; the die is bare silicon and one touch ends its value.
Is ceramic ccd/cis image sensors worth more working than as scrap?
Enormous at the high end and negligible at the low end, and the split is exactly the ceramic/plastic split. A KAF-16803 scraps for ~$15 and resells to astrophotographers for $1,500–4,000 (100–250×); a KAF-8300 is $250–700 against ~$8. Selling tested with a dark frame showing hot-pixel count roughly doubles the price. Note thermal/IR sensor cores are export-controlled and cannot be shipped internationally.
Related in ICs & chips
Get this offline → The full guide runs in your browser with no signal, and you can add your own photos.