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MOS ICs in the garage

syn08

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This guy claims he processed his first PMOS IC (a differential amplifier) in his garage when he was in high school, now that he is on an undergraduate program he build an NMOS polysilicon gate IC (an array of 100 transistors) with 5um features, in the same garage/home http://sam.zeloof.xyz/ He has also an YouTube channel.

I spent over 10 years between graduating and my PhD degree in a MOS fab, so I think I am qualified to call him a fraud. He obviously has some understanding of silicon processing (I guess it is included now in certain undergraduate courses) but his practical approaches and claims are as laughable as it gets: etching MOS oxide with rust remover from Home Depot (a very weak HF solution), using a computer fan to blow water vapours to an so called wet oxidation tube, claiming he’s working on an amorphous polysilicon crystallization process using a laser beam, using photoresists instead of field oxide, claimed he purchased a scanning electron microscope for inspection, claims he is using a DLP as an UV source for lithography, claims he built his own wafer stepper from a microscope and an XY stage, claims he is synthesizing his own photoresists, etc... then claiming he got perfectly functional, stable and reproducible NMOS transistors.

What I found really troublesome, there are people buying into this crap and asking “when are you going to build a microprocessor”. Needless to say, Mark Twain was right, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” But the question still remains: this is where education and common sense is today, in Anno Domini 2021? Should we still be surprised people are buying into the audiophile nonsense? Should we still be surprised Trump was democratically elected president? And what’s next? I used to believe claims about alien anal probing were the most outrageous, but apparently the future beats my expectations.
 
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RayDunzl

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But the question still remains: this is where education and common sense is today, in Anno Domini 2021?

Maybe there is a finite supply of knowledge and common sense, and they are just two more examples of things that are not equitably distributed among us participants in the Great Free Lunch of Life.
 

Blumlein 88

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I wouldn't let it worry you to much. Let us know when he gets around to that tabletop, low temp fusion reactor. That is when we'll be interested in earnest.
 
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