An Interview with Sam Zeloof

From The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

Welcome Sam Zeloof!
Sam is graduating high school soon, he's currently finishing up his senior year.
Sam started the process of making semiconductors in his garage 1.5 years ago
- 0h 1m 15s
Sam was inspired by Jeri Ellsworth's videos
- 0h 2m 45s
He'll be attending Carnegie Mellon University in the fall.
- 0h 8m 7s
Book: Microchip Fabrication by Peter Van Zant
- 0h 10m 23s
Chemicals are hardest to get
- 0h 12m 21s
HF in contained in Whink Rust Cleaner
- 0h 12m 40s
Stump remover
- 0h 12m 54s
Boric Acid is in roach killer
- 0h 12m 59s
Sam gives a tour of his lab
- 0h 14m 10s
Recently finished version of a Dual PMOS differential amplifier!
- 0h 15m 49s
UPDATE: Sam has published about his recently completed IC
Added SEM
- 0h 16m 3s
Wasn't an option to buy a vapor deposition machine, needed to build
- 0h 17m 43s
It was PVD, not CVD
- 0h 18m 9s
Sputtering aluminum
- 0h 18m 59s
Mean Free Path
- 0h 20m 26s
Follow along with the slides Sam prepared for a recent showcase of his work in Newark at the Trenton computer fest
- 0h 20m 52s
Start with wafer, buy off eBay
- 0h 24m 48s
Check resistivity
- 0h 25m 10s
Might be obvious, but Sam is not in a clean room
- 0h 27m 13s
Both Sam and Chris have worked in a Class 100 clean room
- 0h 28m 10s
UDC internship working on organic LED processes
- 0h 28m 18s
Oxidizing layer
- 0h 29m 43s
Photolithography
- 0h 30m 9s
Silicon gate vs metal gate
- 0h 31m 36s
Self aligned gate
- 0h 32m 14s
4 mask set
- 0h 33m 3s
What is doping?
- 0h 33m 42s
Electrons and holes. Talking about holes makes understanding organic semiconductors easier.
- 0h 35m 37s
Dopants are ppm and ppb
- 0h 37m 55s
Phosphine and diborane
- 0h 38m 49s
Adding chemicals and then diffusing
- 0h 41m 14s
Hardest piece to find is the furnace
- 0h 41m 26s
HF acid
- 0h 46m 26s
HF etching of photoresist/oxide
- 0h 49m 26s
Adhesion promoter HMDS
- 0h 50m 13s
Spinning on the dopants
- 0h 53m 40s
Spin coating allows uniform application
- 0h 54m 0s
Migration of dopants down into the lattice
- 0h 54m 52s
Get rid of thick oxide
- 0h 57m 12s
Grow gate oxide
- 0h 57m 25s
Field oxide is 5000-10000A
- 0h 57m 49s
Gate oxide is 500 A
- 0h 58m 11s
Alignment on wafers
- 0h 59m 43s
Doing photolithography with a projector
- 1h 0m 49s
Mike Harrison talking about projectors
- 1h 2m 26s
EUV 13nm
- 1h 2m 39s
Double Patterning
- 1h 3m 20s
Scored corner and do y = mx + b
- 1h 6m 30s
Grateful dead bears
- 1h 8m 25s
Zeloof Semiconductor
- 1h 9m 57s
Thinner layers you dilute etchant
- 1h 10m 45s
Curve tracer
- 1h 12m 1s
Polished surface is tough for probing
- 1h 12m 48s
Make a 4 pin pogo tester
- 1h 13m 2s
3rd masking step (contact)
- 1h 14m 28s
Metalization
- 1h 15m 30s
Everything is shorted
- 1h 15m 36s
Need to expose the traces that are remaining
- 1h 15m 42s
How many transistors are you making?
- 1h 16m 33s
Dual differential amplifier
- 1h 17m 40s
With larger feature sizes if it looks good, i'ts going to work
- 1h 18m 26s
CMP
- 1h 19m 35s
Little Lisa slurry
- 1h 19m 54s
Silane and CVD isn't an option
- 1h 21m 6s
Polysilicon enables more types/more intricate transistos
- 1h 21m 35s
Max output swing isn't possible with metal gate
- 1h 22m 17s
Itsy Chipsy chip service
- 1h 28m 1s
Design tools - Magic VLSI
- 1h 28m 41s
Drawing block of transi