He has a will to learn and do something about it. On the other hand, most students don't even try learning. And they become teachers in universities. They don't even try building things.
hichem sétif he’s referencing the RU-vid channel called primitive technology. Where the guy builds things from scratch. The comment is certainly a compliment not an insult.
that is kinda why I am pushing boundaries here in my lab to build a unit that not only allows producing things like this from a 3D printer perspective, but also breakdown and sorting the materials in such things for reuse in the same printer :)
You will struggle to find food and keep yourself warm. The chip maker will be no help in this. It will take few generations to establish society where is place, time and sources for chip maker.
"To do this at home I've had to build and acquire quite a lot of specialised equpiment..." That has to be the understatement of the century. Astonishing, well done.
The work you're doing is amazing. It's an actual practical and hands-on illustration of the history of semiconductor technology, all condensed into one garage, powered by a spectacular amount of ingenuity, hard work and dedication. Congrats and thanks for sharing your journey, it's been a joy to follow.
"I etched my own PCBs, wow! Let's see how to design and etch my own ICs now, can't be that hard!" - two years of learning Verilog later - "Alright, I can design, let's build it!" - sees the video - "Alright, let's NOT do that!"
im sure those machines are cheap and definitely in a diy budget ;P . or are you trying to tell that you have your own vlog about building such a thing?
30 years ago, I had first contact with books about this stuff(transistors semiconductors electronic components, lithography, architecture of microprocessors etc.) I fall in love with electronics, laying in bed, dreaming of having this make in my garage (storage room) ... was not lucky enough like Zeloof, to have all of this equipment :D Actually my country stepped in bloody war, we were poor like hell, we still are... I am not religious, but have to say GOD BLESS YOU ZELOOF! You are showing to the world it is not space alien technology, you just have to read and learn, but not about astrology :D
@@iceberg789 Doesn't matter, he could easily get a job working for one of the major companies that produces chips. The fact that he had the ambition to do it on his own is very impressive. Not many people see this through to the end.
You even put it in a ceramic DIP package with gold pins... Doesn’t get more retro that this :D Good job, and hats off to you for this impressive engineering feat !
@@dave_dennis When reading your reply i tought of an EVEN MORE RETRO way to close up this DIP package: A quartz-glass window, like on those old EPROM DIP packages.. :D Yes I spelled that right, I did not mean (Flash-)EEPROM, the above tech misses the extra E in front which stands for 'Electrically'. Which is true because mostly EPROM's were erased by shining a UV lightsource directly onto the die. This also explains why most EPROM's had a sticker or piece of tape put over their (always round shaped?) glass window: in order to stop any stray UV light entering and causing (partial) erasing action If you have never seen a EPROM with such a window, I suggest you search for some pictures or pick a (dead?) one up from ebay or such for one or two Dollars. They are magically when you look into them with a lookingglass or microscope ! Greetings,
@@dave_dennis awesome ! I like old tech allot more than new tech. Nowadays everything is hidden from sight, while technology is too cool to be hidden.. I beleive
Great work man, it’s always good to have people who can build from the ground up, because one day if stuff happens to the main fabrication plants and people running them, we’ll need people who can reengineer the world
As someone currently taking an IC fabrication class, this is really inspiring. What we're doing in a university cleanroom full of expensive equipment you've done in your garage.
TBH I was expecting a 4k projector, a microscope, or even a jig to make a chip in multiple exposures. Then step down the cost with a set of standard pad layouts and an edm made clamp to avoid wireing.
Now THIS should be a definition of "cool", and you're a genius, but you already know that. And you made this video very short to attract viewers yet you outlined all the basics. That was another genius move. I am very impressed and glad that the world still has such geniuses with common sense.
Not gonna lie, I think Sam has the highest chance of being accepted for a job of anyone on the planet who has not already worked in the field professionally
Congratulations Sam! Extremely impressive, I've followed you for a longer time and this is unbelievable great. From a previous post I understand you're now going to an university, I hope you can expand your knowledge and skills there even more and we see more exiting things of you in the future. As an autodidact myself I also hope you can cope with all new people and expectations, for me that was a big disappointment in professional life afterwards. But you're that gifted, go for it! Kind regards, Iwan
Impressive. I was still surprised at the person a few years ago that first demonstrated this kind of manufacturing using home equipment. It looked so incredibly challenging I didn't think it would go much past that point. I'm glad to be proven wrong...
i understand a great deal of time and effort went into this . We request that you do a talk on the entire journy from start to finish .. and post the same it can be as boring as a lecture.let the ones who want to watch it watch , i sure will
In high school I made my own circuit board using UV photolithography. I never imagined that you could make IC. Lots of equipment, I see. That was in the 80s.
Seriously Awesome. Myself doing lots of DIY had to bury any of my ideas to play around with homemade ICs because of the one crucial step: the chemistry. Just as you said, the toxic chemicals (especially the hydrofluoric acid for the etching which will dissolve bones if not handled carefully) was the point where I would say ... no way. I think the only really showstopper for me were the chems.
man that looks amazing, i always loved the gold plated look of older ICs. i got a 68k in that style i hope you get a lot more ICs done in the future. maybe you can even build an entire 8 bit computer with self made chips. (maybe you even get it small enough to either fit on a sindle die, or use multiple dies on one chip and connect them to eachother)
someone in 2010: if people get streaming services, they'll just binge watch all episodes of x-files in single sitting 2021: binge watching IC manufacturing DIY "tutorial"
Congratulations Sam. You are absolutely positive crazy engineer to built all that laboratory and get succeed. It is really appreciated. I was excitted during my electronics studies when we had to prepare Si wafer and then make simple p-n junction but I have to admit that equipment/laboratory which we had at university were much less advanced than yours private one at home. Once again good luck with further projects. Simon (Poland)
You have my respect Mr. Sam. You are a guy with a will to learn. You are one of those the world need to keep technology and science available to the humanity. I wish you all the best and good luck in your work.
Don't worry, there's much more to do for freeing microchip technology for the people. You can still contribute to humanity by inventing a method of how to do this much cheaper and simpler, so that everyone could cook microchips at home without expensive equipment and hard-to-get chemicals.
@Shimmy Shai This is becoming even more important these days, when you simply can't trust the microchip manufacturers anymore that they won't put anything nasty inside their dices. But this is based on the premise that only _them_ can manufacture this stuff. If everyone else could be capable of that, we could start trusting our chips again.
In my company we made custom hybrid chips too in 80s and 90s for aircraft. They were huge and it were chips inside a big hybrid IC. Now the technology became obsolete because everything could be made with a PLCs.
...and I thought my process of producing hybrid integrated circuits was a fascination; now it just looks silly compared to this! Amazing stuff, keep at it!
Do you remember Jimmy Neutron Cartoon this is him in reality. As an engineer I could never go this far. Just showing respect is not enough. He must be the next genius after Tesla.
1:26 Hmm, yes, just casually picked up an electron microscope like it's a carton of milk. Where the heck can you just "pick up" an electron microscope? What sort of place sells them?
i actually approached them at a college career fair, i was the only person without a stack of resumes, so I showed them my website and pictures on my phone. they didn't believe the website was mine and said what I did was impossible. One of their engineers even said perhaps there is someone else with the same last name as me posting online
@@SamZeloof yeah, big companies are not that smart. I would suggest that you open source your design. and create a consultancy and services business model company. ASML is kind of a monopoly at this moment and a lot of companies looking for alternatives. not realistic to say you will compete with them, but you m as y find a niche market within open source hardware enthusiasts and hobbyists. p.s. if you have Twitter I would love to follow you.
Been wondering why a 1-2um fab doesn't go full digital masks and offer small volume IC's. Lots of fun analog and sensing things that could be done. With a standard package and bond-pad layout, it could be highly automated. Say, a transparent TQFP-44 with a central thermal ground pad or some transparent QFN package.
I really like the look of the chip,Purple(or any color other than just black) package with gold plated leads,it reminds me of the 70´s Soviet ICs,you should keep it like that,they dont make them like they used to,continue the good work!!!
Where can I find out about my old Kiethly 220 programmable current source? I want to learn whether mine is well calibrated, since I could sell or trade it for a higher value the better it works. Why does your IC look like a very specific aesthetic / form factor, with the layering and gold line in the bottom left corner, and the ceramic layering, just like some of my older Analogue Devices ICs?! I’m guessing because as you pointed out, you used those methods from the 1970s, which yield this look when you follow this process? THANK YOU FOR BEING SUCH A COMMITTED AND DEDICATED, CURIOUS AND HUNGRY FOR KNOWLEDGE - type of person!! AND THANKS FOR SHARING! I’d love to have a job working for you, should you be on the lookout for an assistant (I live in southern CA)! I really wish for you to live a very fulfilling and satisfying long life, filled with fortune and fortunate circumstances, and never to loose heart no matter how bad things can be. None of us gets everything we want, but IF we struggle and work hard and fight all out, then maybe somebody else ( the younger generations?) can have it a little better than us. THANKS AGAIN!
Impressive but this is by no means a simple garage operation, as others have stated, some universities aren't this well equipped, but always cool to see independent manufacture of ICs and people acquiring and sharing know-how
Actual theory even though is quite simple and can be explained in an A4 size sheet of paper, the sheer engineering challenge to pull it together in practice by a single person is quite an astonishing feat.
Great intro and been reading through some of your documentation Makes me wonder if this project deserves more documentation then you have given it, but it is still quite an achievement
Sam, you are incredible, for me, it is an automatic subscription with the bell button! So much knowledge, enthusiasm, and hard work! Mindblowing, keep up the incredible job! How much did you pay for your equipment? I would definitely consider supporting you on Patreon!
That really cool. I'm actually about to start the same journey. I picked up a scanning electron microscope and good size vacuum chamber for less than scrap value not long ago. The two items I'm missing that I know I might have trouble finding for cheap or building are the furnace and wire bonder.
the furnace is easy to build yourself, i have seem dozens of good tutorials. ru-vid.com?search_query=diy+electrical+furnace wirebonding, not sure by my guess its way easier than to find the electronmicroscope xD.
I am beyond impressed. It's a bit like making PCBs only a bit more accurate and using lithographic reduction, then repeating the process 3 times. I could be interested in designing you a very simple 8 bit CPU in random logic for stage 3, time permitting. [I and a friend designed one once at uni while doing Comp Sci back in the 80s, christened the PUB1 on account of its design heritage, then renamed to the PBU1 on account of it being Pretty Bloody Useless...]
Kudos for the young lad! For anyone calling him rich, they should know with respect to the equipment he is just lucky for being in the US, for you can find used professional equipment for a low price, BUT the other parts of the "equation" are pure skills and persistence. Most young people are lazy and don't understand that in most of the cases they won't have enough free time in the future. As for the universities and the processes of manufacturing an IC, in my case we only did these things in theory (a high ranking university in the UK) and although my course was an electronics engineering one and with embedded systems and VLSI as the main part of it, we only gained practical experience in the designing, not the use or design of equipment for realizing ICs. I am sure they had LSI capabilities in-house since they had R&D on microelectronics but we've never actually seen them.
If you could manage about 3.5k you could create something like a early 6502 chip. Also could this be miniaturized the manufacturing process down to something like a desktop printer?
Considering the equipment and processes involved, I rather doubt it. This is basically a very small scale equivalent of a full semiconductor fab. Quite how he got that kind of equipment is beyond me, but it can't have been cheap. This seems less like a DIY approach (the kind of thing that led to the early 3d printers) and more like someone just buying a whole heap of obsolete manufacturing equipment and reproducing the process from there. The difference being that one could lead to a new, cheaper, more accessible way of doing things, but the other not so much.
With the exception of a few 'nice-to-have-but-not-technically-necessary' items like the electron microscope, most of that gear was itself home made, by the looks of it.
@@KuraIthys The vacuum chamber and the DLP projector came from the trash, the electron microscope was broken when he got it, and microscopes are a dime a dozen.
