Sam Zeloof

You'd love Sam Zeloff http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ he makes DIY transistors

You got me. That was more of a rhetorical flourish than something I've actually done, or would do. "I haven't done this recently. Or in the past." Sam Zeloof is doing great things: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ > Making even the simplest 6502 equivalent by yourself is impossible, forget more complex projects. I feel like this should be urgently addressed, given how important computing is. I've thought about this, more in the context of post-apocalyptic computing rather than trust, FWIW. If I were really going to make my own computers from scratch I think clockwork (Clock of the Long Now) or fluidics would probably be the way to go. Maybe electro-mechanical (relays, etc.) or vacuum tubes? We did pretty well with the abacus and the slide rule, eh?

Sam Zeloof alone managed to manufacture chips with the early 1970s technology in his garage using old fab equipment bought cheap (sadly don't remember the exact budget): http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ Maybe with more people and more capital this could be scaled to something that can be sold, like replicas of classic CPUs.

Sam Zeloof is building ICs in his garage. His blog and youtube channel are excellent and he has now a quite sophisticated process that produces reliable results, quite astounding really: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

I'd agree with you about it being more reachable. Slightly related, but after I read your initial comment, I actually found this blog [0] by a guy at CMU who is manufacturing his own ICs at home. I'm definitely not super knowledgeable of the hardware space, but from what little I know, your current plan sounds reasonable and well-scoped! I wish you the best of luck with undertaking this project if you decide to go forward with it. [0]: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

It's not ASML, but Sam Zeloof's built ICs in his parents garage. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

For a real case of someone making integrated circuits at home, this boy did it: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ for real.

His blog post: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/?utm_source=thenewstack&utm_medium=website&a…

I think a lot of folks underestimate how fabulously complicated it is to fab a chip. Yes, you can diy it in your garage, here's a wonderful implementation. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ But take a look at the specialized tools they used. Heck, think about proper handling of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid and this is just a simple amp. imagine trying to make something with lots of gates? Making a single chip is _hard_. And that's just for a one off. doing that at scale requires an amazing amount of process control. And that diy chip is, according to the author "5µm (1975 tech. level)" Anyway, yes, you could make a chip in your garage, but it'd take a lot of time to ramp up, and you'd only have 1.

Very. 350 nm is about the limit of what [0]'s DIY process should be scalable to with somewhat more precision outside of the photolithography itself, as well as clean room conditions. [0]: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

While possibility of creating ICs in a "homelab" remains years or decades in the future, it is an innovation that is very important to strive for. The world of information has become increasingly dangerous, and trust is in short supply. We need stronger guarantees that our computational hardware is secure and backdoor-free and the best (but not perfect) way of doing it is to manufacture it yourself. Libre Silicon [1] is one organization that is striving forward and I am hopeful they will make great progress. Edit: when a high schooler can fabricate ICs in his garage [2], you know with enough effort, a lot of progress can be made on the problem [1] https://libresilicon.com/ [2] http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657398

Jeri Ellsworth (who is far beyond "ambitious amateur") managed the first home CMOS process a few years ago, and I think the state of the art has advanced to about 1975 tech: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ It's a lot of work, obviously, and requires a big set of interdisciplinary tools.

http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ This is one of the things where the details of the "booting civilization" situation matter a LOT. If you can find a Blu-ray player, it'd be much easier for you to make something like Breaking Taps did- no need for a projector or computer, you could even do this by hand using an optical relay. However it's VERY hard to make an appropriate UV laser[1], and it's very hard to make a photoresist that works in infrared where a CO2 laser is easy to make. In that case you have to use a projector. For a while I've wondered how feasible it would be to use an electron microscope to just ablate everything. Shockingly easy to make for such an excellent instrument. [1]: Ironically the easiest type of laser to make is a UV nitrogen laser, but it's extreme power and short (nanosecond) pulse time mean you can't use it for this: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasercn2.htm#cn2cn20

The amount of coorp marketing bullshit was outstanding again: > The state-of-the-art technology in Bosch's new semiconductor factory in Dresden shows what outstanding results can be achieved when industry and government join forces," said European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager. who just cites the Bosch press officer, who even dared to mention AI and self-driving cars. In reality this far away from "state of the art" or "outstanding". The plan is a 65nm fab, now they are still running 130nm for a year already. Their neighbors in Dresden are Infineon with a 90nm fab, and Global Foundries (Ex-AMD) with 22nm. This was once state of the art (some decade ago). Current state of the art is 4-7nm in Taiwan, and Germany/Europe is not even close. 130nm is close the masks which can be produced at home, just not at scale. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ Some plant parts are state of the art though coming from Dresden. Such as the Ardenne wafer coating machines, which are used in Taiwan also.

I wish! I've actually looked into it and there's lots of interesting work in academia and garages on small scale, low cost silicon fab [1] as well as the electron microscopy necessary to do quality control [2]. Last I checked the state of the art was using regular microscopes with Texas Instruments digital micromirror devices from projectors with basic photoresist and etchant. The DMD reflects light from your light source onto the wafer with the resist and you can control the micromirrors like pixels to only reflect light at the pixels you want to expose the resist. The doping is doable with basic vapor deposition but alignment between steps is brutally hard and the doping requires a lot of tuning and environmental stability to get right so the feature limit is 1 micrometer at best. I even found a TI 1080p UV DMD and bought a roll of lithographic film to try to get that feature size limit down. My plan was to expose the litho film instead of the wafer directly and build very precise jigs for the film off of a precision machine base I could get for a few grand, with custom built linear motors to move between steps but I got stuck on the physics and math. It looked like I had a solution using neural networks and a DIY laser interferometer as the feedback loop as a shortcut to learning control theory but then got distracted by more urgent matters... c'est la vie [1] http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/ [2]…

fixing the url http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

It's totally doable! Although it does take some non-household equipment and chemicals. But much of the equipment you need can be purchased off ebay for relatively cheap. It's actually a hobby project I'm working on right now, to create some large transistors and simple circuits. My goal is 10um process (aka 1970's technology), but I'd be pretty happy with something a few orders of magnitude higher. Jeri Ellsworth is the first that I'm aware of having created some large transistors (NMOS process) in her garage and documented the process: - https://hackaday.com/2010/05/13/transistor-fabrication-so-simple-a-chi… - http://4hv.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?85399.post And Sam Zeloof very recently did similar: - https://hackaday.com/2017/02/25/the-fab-lab-next-door-diy-semiconducto… - Lots of other cool stuff on his blog too, like a SEM he restored in his garage, sputtering experiments, etc: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ As for me, I'm tackling the maskless lithography step first and repurposing a pico projector with modified optics, laser and translation XY stage. More details being blogged actively here: https://hackaday.io/project/25260-makerfoundry > Would the physics work at that large scale? It could be a cool way to demonstrate the concepts. Transistors definitely work at the macro scale (see Jeri and Sam's transistors), but they do have some funky properties. Their switching speed is slow, and due to impurities in the process tend to be…

Personally I agree, but the world doesn't seem to. Their first project (https://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/) was all the way back in 2018, and it doesn't seem like it changed all too much (yet), while since I read the first blog post in 2018, I also thought we would have reached a much more mature DIY ecosystem by now. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited too about it, and can't wait to personally do some experiments as well, although not at the same scale. But I'm not sure it's world changing, at least until I've actually seen any changes :)

Wonder if these materials are the kind of thing the "make your own integrated circuits" people would be able to use? ie: https://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/

At what feature size? http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/

This was mostly about making a silicon wafer. This video shows more detail on the rest of the process in a home lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5ycm7VfXg (blog here: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/)

You can get Hydrofluoric acid at the grocery store... it's used in "Wink" stain remover. It's strong enough to get the job done, but dilute enough to be... well, in the grocery store. The stuff that you don't want to mess with is Silane, which Sam describes as "a toxic and explosive gas".[1] [1] http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/

> ... electron beam lithography ... could theoretically be built out of a hacked scanning electron microscope Not only theoretically. Sam hacked his own scanning electron microscope and did electron beam lithography in 2018. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/e-beam-lithography/

> Instead of a standard HF etch, a buffered oxide etch of NH4F (Ammonium Fluoride) in HF can be used to control the etch rate and photoresist lifting. I use approximately 20-30g of 100% NH4F per 50mL of HF (stock whink rust remover) and etch time for 6000Å SiO2 is 20min at 20C. A couple drops of Triton X-100 nonionic surfactant may be added to the BOE to improve etch uniformity, wetting, and ensure consistency through a thicker resist. A good BOE recipe can be found here but assumes industrial-strength HF. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/sio2-patterning/ See my other threads. HF is Serious Business, but approachable for the hobbyist if you know about chemical hygiene. You can buy Whink at the hardware store.

The machines at the very top are the only ones at the very top, yes. But there are dozens of manufacturers and fabs building useful ICs slightly shy of the bleeding edge. Lots of microcontrollers, general-purpose ICs, and special purpose ICs are still very frequently made on 22nm and 45nm scales. And most of the hard trial-and-error discovery and experimentation has been done already, so it should not take 50 years to recover 50 years of historical progress. A process from 1970 can be done in the garage with 'just' a microscope and projector (and a lot of skill and hard work!): http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/

No, Sam Zeloof started from blank silicon wafers and did four layers of photolithography to produce PMOS gates. He used boric acid for the boron diffusion. He sputtered an aluminum layer on top for the metal and etched it with phosphoric acid. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/

No, I don't think so. But it's not because of the chemicals or machines. There's not really any demand for it. Most hobbyist "ICs" are fully digital and can already be realized on an FPGA. For simpler applications, you can probably program a microcontroller to do what you want. Integrated circuits are appealing to industry because they're integrated - they can be smaller and they reduce cost (long term; still need the upfront investment). These are important things for many products, especially in RF, but they aren't really driving factors for hobbyists. That being said, people are trying! http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/

Well, this chap managed to make his own chips at home: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/ Plus an electron microscope!

I would expect that it is certainly expensive but he seems to be building lots of his equipment himself instead of buying it. The photolithography machine is a modified microscope with a projector for example. The centrifuge for spin-coating the wafers with photoresist is also DIY'ed according to the video from the article. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/maskless-photolithography/

Direct link to the blogpost: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/