[Jeri Ellsworth] made this silicon inverter at home, by hand. It took her two years to get the process figured out and achieve something we didn’t think was possible. The complexity of manufacture, and the wide range of tools and materials needed seem insurmountable but she did it anyway. Her home chip fab Flickr set is well commented and details her work area and part of the processing. If you’re hurting for more check out her 40 minute Metalab talk which we’ve embedded after the break.
If her name sounds familiar but you just can’t place it you may know her from The Fatman and Circuit Girl. We’ve also featured some of her hacks, such as her Pinball challenge against [Ben Heckendorn], and her giant Etch-a-Sketch.
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/2423528]
[Thanks Deyjavont]
Amazing. Actually amazing.
(drops in awe)
This is real hack:P
Jeri! \o/
Actually, Jeri has already built a homemade fusion reactor in her lab. She is just not able to reveal this as of yet because she doesn’t want to disrupt the current time continuum. Also, she is part cyborg and can shoot lasers from her eyes.
Don’t mess with Jeri.
Jeri Norris!
@klulukasz: Yes! THIS is what HAD could be (nay, should be!) about.
Good find, folks!
damn.
mother of god…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth
safe to say its jeri rigged?
Amazing work.
Surely this was on HAD back when she did it?
I was showing this to people at work just a couple of days ago.
Jeri is my queen now. /had/
Seriously, I already had an idea of making Transistors myself. She is a bit older and have more time for it. Dammit, need to Finnish school or drop out like she did…
I mean no disrespect but what exactly did she do here? She built a chip fab?
@GSV Ethics Gradient
Yeah i’m pretty sure this was already posted on here. It’s how I learned about Jeri.
Goddess Number three has arrived behind Marilyn Mach Vos Savant and Kim Komando. I noticed no sexist BS yet. I respect feminism of this sort; not the Hillary psycho-slut variety. Shirley Muldowney and Marie Curie(RIP) and my Grandmother(world’s least neurotic person EVER) run rings around the Bella Abzugs and that other sow whose name escapes me(the one who fights gun ownersip and hired an armed guard for her kid).
When a person’s irrelevant characteristics affect a leader’s decisions about manning(sic) a position, the resultant lack of fullest efficiency will impose restrictions on the successful completion of the project. If Jackie Robinson had not joined his team they would have finished in a lower position. Tie your own legs with sexism or racism, etc; don’t force others to emulate stupidity. Apartheid forced nonracists to subsidize the evil and stupid racists in SA.
BTW does M M v S get royalties from Mach numbers? I believe her uncle was honored by that term.
I swear I saw this on HAD before, but I couldn’t find it. So I thought it best to submit it to HAD for the rest of you folks to see that haven’t found out you can make your OWN transistors!
She did mention that you can get the Si wafers on ebay for relatively cheap. Anyone up to the challenge? (I have kids at home so I dont want to play around with boron and phosphorus such as BCl3 and POCl3)
Next is homemade ICs. atmel-at-home would be the name of the homemade uC kit
oh, and an excellent book I have on making ICs is by Motorola. Integrated Circuits – Design Principles and Fabrication. It is older (1965), but that goes nicely with homebrew stuff.
Now if you put Jeri together with the French guy who builds vacuum tubes from scratch, we will have actual Cylons in no time.
I for one welcome our new homemade active component overlords.
::raises hand:: (stoopid questurn)
if i have a home chip fab, can it build me a new cpu so i never have to buy a new cpu again?
@L Stark
Be sure to add Hedy Lamarr and Rosalind Franklin to that list too.
The French guy that builds homemade tubes is incredible. Also that he uses the scissors from a pocket knife to cut out his plates. It gives it “that sound”
I am in love…. Jeri, you ar awsome.
Excellent stuff! I enjoyed both videos very much.
Jerry marry me! We will grow many many small chips together :-)
This lady is extremely cool
Goddess Jeri say me pls. if you can make a rf transistor of 10 watts for 100MHz.
I meant to mention Mach 1 Mustangs. Carroll Shelby has earned many $ because Ford wants the added value of his imprimatur on their hotrod automobiles. The Mach family is being exploiticationized!!!
Wow, she’s probably the coolest woman in the world. After my wife, of course.
Very driven and talented. Hope to get to work with her someday.
it is amaizing, but why ?
THIS! IS! What I come to HAD for. Sometimes I think about the fact that though I am able to build things from parts, what would happen if I was in a situation where I was cut off from all resources. Would I have the knowledge to build simple devices out of raw materials around. I never though when I was younger that chemistry would be useful for me because I was interested in electronics, yes, short-sighted of me, batteries and all the recent advancements in power conversion techniques and my personal interest in learning to make parts from raw materials is forcing me to “kick the books” again :)
It’s going to be great to make a radio with the kids completely from raw household items and show them that electronics is all around them in many ways. And you don’t need to rely on multi-million dollar fab to create something. Sorry for ramlbing… :)
@Roman Dulgarov I actually really like all the stories some good HAD articles get in the Comments.
It gives me an idea that I’m not the only person wanting to make thing from scratch.
To learn, to create, to enjoy. Just because we can!
impressive work :)
i mentioned this to someone today and they were amazed that it was possible to build a working chip at all, even with lab equipment.
on a side note, SiC is fun to play with, and locating interesting negative resistance/LED/etc areas is just a matter of trial and error.
Wow shes gorgeous and she’s smart. Jeri will you marry me?
Just wondering if the “silicone” tag is intentional, it should be Silicon. Silicone is for something else entirely.
@neil: nope, that was a slip of the finger. Fixed.
Seems to be suspicously light on technical details.
google “ice etching lithography”
seems that with a simple electron beam, vacuum chamber and a Peltier module stack you could build semiconductors with no expensive masks or other show stoppers.
the only major problem is that the chamber has to be pumped back down once the ice melts, but there is probably a a workaround.
Back when I was a kid I had crystal radio kits. Kids of the future are going to have Make Your Own Integrated Circuits kids… >_>