Can one make their own chips?

From: Peter C. Wallace <pcw_at_mesanet.com>
Date: Wed Mar 12 13:50:00 2003

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, TeoZ wrote:

> You mean a real working lab?
>
> Even if you could legally get all the chemicals to do all the chemical
> baths, there is no way you could get the permit to do it in your house.
> Diffusion ovens would be a pain, along with power requirements, ultrapure
> water + heater, etc. Even if you could make the chip on a wafer (and all
> your equipment has to be for that size wafer), you still need the equipment
> to turn the silicon into a chip like the chip cutting machine, plastic
> encapolating stuff, and the gold wiring interconnects to the outside pins.
> Getting all this into a class 100 cleanroom with associated hepa filters and
> climate control would be interesting, that and what would you do with the
> waste products?
>

Gee, dump the in the trash like the big companies used to do...

(Remembering stories from friend of mine that used to work at Signetics
joking about how often the white elephants in back of the fab caught fire...)

>
> Would be cheaper to have a design made at some chip foundry
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Innfogra_at_aol.com>
> To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 1:15 PM
> Subject: Can one make their own chips?
>
>
> > > you can't make a 8008 chip from scratch
> >
> > In the discussion of wafers it made me wonder if one could lay down their
> own
> > design in Silicon. or duplicate an early design like the 8008 (lets not
> get
> > into a discussion of copyrights).
> >
> > Does anyone collect FAB equipment? A small clean room would not be hard to
> > set up. At one time I saw a 3 inch mask aligner go for $25. I bought the 4
> > inch Mask Aligner for $150. There is so much old FAB Equipment around it
> > seems one should be able to set up a home lab. Does anyone know of one in
> > existence?
> >
> > Paxton
> > Astoria, OR
>

Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics
Received on Wed Mar 12 2003 - 13:50:00 GMT