Can i cover Vl53L0X Time of Flight sensor with glass for protection?

[Shubham Shivarkar]

Hello,

I am using Vl53L0X Time of Flight sensor. The sensor is going to be used in medical field, as the sensor is an IR sensor I am facing issues in covering the surface with protective glass so as to protect the sensor from the external environment without hampering its sensitivity. Please guide me as what can be done in this case

Thank You in advance.

[John E KVAM]

Yes you can - and you should unless your sensor is otherwise protected. Getting dust and dirt in the holes will be bad.

Glass works, as does Acrylic or polycarbinate.

Your material should be

• THIN as you can make it
• as FLAT - non-textured - as you can
• as CLOSE to the sensor as you can get it
• as TRANSPARENT to 940nm light as you can get it
• as Parallel to the sensor as you can get it.

To be sure you can violate one or two of these, but not all of them.

The issue is CROSSTALK - and we have a good video on the subject.

VL53L0X Dirty Cover Glass:

We designed the device to go behid the glass near the cell-phone camera.

So I'm sure you can get it to work.

[Shubham Shivarkar]

Hello Sir,

Thank you for the reply.

Please can you provide us the exact details() of the glass that can be used.

So we can further manufacture it for our application.

Thank You and Regards.

[John E KVAM]

​Alas, I cannot. There are way too many choices. Use polycarbonate if you want your glass moldable, Acrylic if you want cheap. Gorilla glass if you want scratch resistant.

Both polycarbonate and acrylic come in lots of colors that are quite acceptable. (Stay away from white. It's too reflective. But almost every UI designer wants it.)

if you mold the polycarbonate, you can even thin out the area where the sensor goes and achieve good results.

The best advice I can give you is to get a bit of your material, and drop it on the P-Nucleo-53l0A1 evaluation kit. And use the provide shims to get the air-gap the same as in your design.

It will give you a really good idea of you 'glass' quality before you commit to something.