Sure if you get good enough magnification you can see the individual transistors, though most of these chips are multi-layer so you have to dissolve through the layer one at a time.

@cpmike

Absolutely. My company regularly decaps/X-Rays IC’s for various purposes. Usually it’s to explore the possibilities of patent infringement, lol.

Another hackish way of decapping is just to simply take a blowtorch to the chip. It’ll become very britte and fall apart, except for the die itself.

Interesting… I wonder if the ‘oil’ (really a sap-derivative) which they use for dust control on North American gravel roads would work the same way. It comes in 55gal drums at a reasonable price, and I’m sure the local MD could spare a litre or two.

LOL. Our company paid to get rid of their nitric acid. We could have just given you some. Now we would have to order it.

Nitric acid is used for explosives, not for meth

careful of rosin fume, it will give you asthma. we used to encase the chips in Bakelite then polish, it worked well. Nice to see different options.

@Vonskippy, I live under the really big one called Africa…

Hmm didn’t realize flux could do that.(that sap is just rosin…it’s been used in solder forever)I wonder if rosin sap is more effective than just using a bottle of rosin flux. Hmm would no clean fluxes work as well?

Sparkfun has a very interesting series of identifying fake ATMEL processors they purchased via decapitation at the ATMEL laboratories. Start here and drill down

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=395

Yes Nitric Acid is involved. Good read

Regards, Drone

Pretty sure that the chip doesn’t work (at least properly) after boiling it in rosin at +320 C for 20 minutes. With large geometries could be lucky enough though.

I think that may be good for failure or topological analysis (like reading a rom) but not for an active attack. But if nothing is going to be lost trying… :)

If a hobbyist in the US wanted to do this with fuming nitric acid where could I find some? I understand the stuff needs to be handled very carefully, with proper safety and ventilation and not disposed of in an unsafe way.

@Jayson
Where else do people buy pianos and guitars and such?

Even in my relatively small home town, we had at least 6 or 7 dedicated music shops, not including the 3 Guitar Centers, which is like the sell-out version. Cheap MIDI controllers though.