Topic for #homecmos is now Homebrew CMOS and MEMS foundry design | http://code.google.com/p/homecmos/ | Logs: http://en.qi-hardware.com/homecmos-logs/
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<azonenberg> Hi guys
<azonenberg> Just built myself a new toy, http://i.imgur.com/TvI3s.jpg
<azonenberg> experiments will be resuming shortly
<soul-d> nice whats the cabin material made off
<azonenberg> 1/8" PVC from Mcmaster-Carr, held together with L-brackets
<azonenberg> 1/8" clear acrylic on the sash
<azonenberg> 240cfm duct fan
<azonenberg> whcih on the 1x2 foot opening gives 120 linear FPM, minus a bit for the cracks (joints arent caulked etc) and you get 80-100
<azonenberg> well within the safe range
<azonenberg> i tested with IPA and acetone and it kept concentrations well below the odor threshold at all times
<azonenberg> whcih, depending on who you ask, is 40-100 PPM for acetone and the safe exposure limit is 500-1000 depending on the regulators you ask
<azonenberg> So i'm well within safe limits
<azonenberg> IOW, the thing actually works
<soul-d> nice had 500m3 somthing fan deliverd today :P probably overkill for that ;)
<soul-d> i take those numbers are from woerking area
<azonenberg> You actually dont want too high or you get fortices
<soul-d> egg 8 hour work day ?
<azonenberg> vortices*
<azonenberg> which have a habit of leaking nasties out of the hood on the edges
<azonenberg> hecne the 120fpm cap
<azonenberg> and yes, the PEL i quoted was 8-hour time weighted
<azonenberg> the MSDS listed three limits depending on agency but they were all 500-1000 PPM range for acetone
<azonenberg> iirc all of the chemicals i work with except HF have the PEL significantly above the odor threshold
<azonenberg> Meaning if you cant smell it, its safe
<azonenberg> I wanted to test first with relatively safe substances like IPA
<azonenberg> The next test will use something stronger like concentrated HCl
<azonenberg> if i cant smell that at all from outside the hood i'm good :)
<azonenberg> Odor threshold 0.25 to 10 PPM
<azonenberg> personally i think the 10 is high, that stuff is pretty potent
<soul-d> donno if i smelled that before id probably try to convert some amonia fertilizer to KNO3 since ive done that before
<azonenberg> Concentrated hydrochloric acid is not something you are going to forget the smell of lol
<soul-d> but then again chemistry is on hold still
<soul-d> only have 30% and 10%
<soul-d> but never opened the 30% yet
<azonenberg> Mine is 32% i think
<azonenberg> And do so with caution
<azonenberg> It will most likely fume strongly
<soul-d> it's 5 liters to :P havent touched it since i bought i lol donno even why :D
<azonenberg> Five liters??
<azonenberg> Mine is a 1L bottle and i thought that was a lot
<soul-d> stron concetrations only came in this package
<azonenberg> i had trouble buying any less except in very high purity
<soul-d> lol ?
<azonenberg> not as in concentration
<azonenberg> but like ACS reagent grade or trace metals basis
<azonenberg> you can get in half-liter bottles
<azonenberg> Technical grade the smallest i could get was 1L
<soul-d> i had trouble finding it :)
<azonenberg> where are you located again?
<soul-d> oh still is wall cleaning grade
<soul-d> netherlands
<azonenberg> Well it's technical, but pretty high grade
<azonenberg> as far as technical goes
<azonenberg> I intend to buy some ACS grade when this runs out
<azonenberg> but it's lasting me forever
<azonenberg> just doing PCB etching etc with it
<soul-d> still use ferric chloride for that
<azonenberg> i use one part conc HCl to 6 parts 3% H2O2
<azonenberg> gently heated
<azonenberg> it's stronger and also transparent
<azonenberg> so you can watch the board etch
<soul-d> probably be easyer to follow along true but i assumed that stuff was bit more nasty then this brown stuff
<azonenberg> You do need better ventilation
<azonenberg> But if you have it, the etch quality is superior
<azonenberg> it also doesnt get rust stains on your glassware
<azonenberg> cleans off nicely, all of the waste products are water soluble
<soul-d> also have the sodium perchlorate stuff for etching somewhere
<azonenberg> persulfate you mean?
<azonenberg> perchlorate would probably blow up, not etch :p
<soul-d> yes that srry :)
<azonenberg> And when i'm done etching i just store the CuxClx contaminated waste in a jar until the next scheduled hazmat pickup
<azonenberg> the county has one or two a year
<soul-d> we do have a disposal thingy for chemicals
<azonenberg> Yeah, I'm trying to run my lab as by-the-book as I can
<azonenberg> even if the volumes involved probably arent large enough to matter
<azonenberg> rather not take chances
<azonenberg> And its a good habit to get into
<azonenberg> for if i end up working in a commercial lab or handling larger volumes of stuff
<soul-d> yeah thats why i stopped until reasonable buget/safe enviroment since im pretty clueless
<soul-d> problem is hard to do self study
<azonenberg> I figured an open window was probably good enough for what i was doing, not handling anything too nasty
<azonenberg> But better engineering controls never hurt
<azonenberg> So i decided to build the hood
<azonenberg> Next step is going to be to use the aluminum stock i just ordered to machine a little jig
<azonenberg> to hold my wafer over the evaporator basket so i can do nickel deposition
<azonenberg> it sublimes so i cant use the tool's normal under-basket moun
<azonenberg> which expects a material that melts before evaporating
<azonenberg> At that point i'll be good to go for through-wafer etch testing
<azonenberg> In parallel i have some ideas for improving lithography resolution
<azonenberg> theoretically down to 330nm
<azonenberg> but realistically i think 500-750 will be a limit with my optics
<soul-d> you where at 22um now ?
<azonenberg> It was nominally the 20um node but i think the exact half-pitch was 21 and change
<azonenberg> generally overetch meant features were a little smaller than that and spaces a little larger
<azonenberg> This is doing 10x reduction of a 200um mask
<azonenberg> I'm going to buy 12.5um masks from a real mask shop
<azonenberg> then try 4/10/40x reduction of them as well as contact printing
<azonenberg> I dont know if i can project 12.5um features so i'm going to put some larger features on the mask too
<azonenberg> probably 25 and 50
<azonenberg> i'm quite certain i can resolve 50 on the mask, times 10x reduction is 5um
<azonenberg> so i can hit that as a minimum
<azonenberg> but if i use the 40x objective (which has proven flaky in the past) i could potentially go 12.5um / 40x = ~330nm
<azonenberg> again thats a theoretical number and i think 500-750 will be a practical limit
<azonenberg> But submicron would be very nice
<soul-d> true, spend bit to much on electronics so most projects came to grinding halt also since pc is getting old and buggy don't want to code to much on it
<soul-d> mostly scavenging stuff that could be used
<soul-d> was even looking back at amature telescope making for fun want to do some mirrors myself
<azonenberg> Well, if you decide to build an evaporation or sputtering rig
<azonenberg> let me know lol
<azonenberg> we can collaborate on design
<soul-d> long way to go still but shall see what 2012 will bring i do want to build more stuff
<soul-d> both of those where with a vacume right only idea i had for evap is a basic high temp oven schematic 40 years old :P carbon rods and lots of power
<soul-d> but i want allot like a ballanced buget book, get piece of community land to grow own food budget for rehabilitation need to gain lots of (healty ) weight
<soul-d> anything that is left over is for learning purposes and projects :)
<azonenberg> No, for evap there's a bit more involved
<azonenberg> You want to use a tungsten filament coiled into a basket
<azonenberg> You can buy them from Ted Pella among other vendors
<azonenberg> Put pellets or wire of your material inside it
<azonenberg> Then pump the chamber down to the 1E-6 torr range
<azonenberg> and run current trough the filament
<azonenberg> Generally speaking you'll want a couple of volts at pretty high current
<azonenberg> tens to hundreds of amps
<azonenberg> general control method is a variac off of wall power to control voltage, followed by a step-down transformer
<soul-d> k yeah still have my eyes out on vacume sture thats probably the hardest part to get right
<azonenberg> a large enough bell jar will cost $$, yes
<azonenberg> then you'd need a roughing pump and a high-vac pump, probably a diffusion pump
<azonenberg> you cant get deep enough to evaporate with only a mechanical pump
<soul-d> 2 stage or somthing i thought you said ?
<azonenberg> I have a 2-stage mechanical pupm but that only hits 4E-2 torr
<azonenberg> you have to be able to hit the -6 range which means a diffusion or turbopump
<azonenberg> the second are very expensive so for hobbyists it basically means you need a diffusion
<azonenberg> Sputtering uses much less deep vacuum, you can hit that with a mechanical pump
<azonenberg> But you need a source of inert gas (usually argon) and high voltage
<azonenberg> So it poses its own set of problems
<soul-d> high voltage is easy depending of current
<soul-d> got 5 kv transformers :P
<azonenberg> Depends on what you're sputtering, even 500 - 1kV might be enough
<azonenberg> But you need tens to low hundreds of watts
<azonenberg> to power the plasma
<azonenberg> This assumes DC sputtering, not RF
<azonenberg> also, if you are doing a deposition of more than a small amount of material you need to cool the target
<azonenberg> so it wont metl
<azonenberg> melt*
<azonenberg> small meaning <50nm probably
<soul-d> my kv transformers are 400watts
<soul-d> 3-4,5 kv
<azonenberg> You might not want that much voltage depending on the material, i am more familiar with the basics of the process and not specific parameters so i could be wrong
<soul-d> but thats for lighting L(
<azonenberg> But the operating principle is similar to that of a neon sign
<azonenberg> you strike a plasma through low-pressure inert gas
<azonenberg> in fact, the plasma will glow very much like a neon sign
<soul-d> tb
<soul-d> there are plasma light's there day's
<soul-d> but expensive to steal the transformer from
<azonenberg> Lol
<azonenberg> The only difference is that you tune the parameters for removing of material from the target (and depositing on your sample) and not for maximum brightness
<soul-d> but will be along way before i start playing with high voltage though :) light bulb is bit easyers then above :P
<azonenberg> Yeah, i dont trust my HV skills yet
<soul-d> but this high rating tranformers start at 70watt
<soul-d> for lights
<azonenberg> i want to start slow and make sure i'm not going to electrocute myself :p
<soul-d> hps and mh
<soul-d> hpresure sodium and metalic halide or somthing
<azonenberg> i see
<soul-d> and 2 kinds electrincs ones i think done by som swithcing stuff or simple bloks of copper types ( like for TL but but bigger )
<soul-d> maybe look at what type of componets they use in electric types
<azonenberg> I'm not too familiar with HV in general so i cant say
<soul-d> me neither just hook up the light to grow peppers under it :P
<soul-d> and glad i don't get shocked bu the system lol
<soul-d> but still turn on all high voltage stuff on from a distance
<azonenberg> Lol, yeah
<azonenberg> Good practice
<soul-d> yeah ever since i had to quickly try laserprinter 's stepper motor and plugged it in wrong way around chips do bang loud :)
<soul-d> on the printers main board *
<azonenberg> lol
<soul-d> but i should make a picture of my shed :P
<soul-d> you probably call it chemical hazard lol
<azonenberg> lol
<soul-d> now pots and pan's with kno3 and sugar to :) as smoke stuff to play around on new year a bit don't have a ball mill otherwise would made some candles
<azonenberg> lol, ok thats pretty bad compared to my setup :p
<soul-d> lol no it's worse
<soul-d> maybe ill blur an image :P
<soul-d> oh on picture it looks ever worse then in real :P
<soul-d> but it will show you why im waiting on buget to fix the shed :P
<soul-d> im so glad im not my neighbour -> http://i.imgur.com/QPs8F.jpg
<soul-d> most of it is junk anyhow :P need to bring it away some day
<soul-d> now ofcourse you where wondering what the oven is for :P
<soul-d> i used that to heat kno3 and sugar :P
<azonenberg> lol, ok
<azonenberg> yeah, my place looks nowhere near that bad
<azonenberg> i'm trying hard to make sure i'm as by-the-book as possible
<soul-d> usaly before i do somthing i first need half a day to clean
<azonenberg> lol wow
<soul-d> if i knew winter was gonna be this hot
<soul-d> i would have had it clean though
<azonenberg> I'm actually in the process of tidying up the whole apt, roommates are gone and the semester is over
<azonenberg> So now i can bring the place up to my usual standards
<azonenberg> i'll post some pics including all of the new lab equipment once the cleaning is done
<soul-d> yeah did home partly especialy since bought gazillion electrionics i need to get stuf sorted
<soul-d> clean sorted work area does work better
<soul-d> and less stress full
<soul-d> but i need a reasonable buget
<soul-d> not gonan fix that with few hunderd bucks
<soul-d> since its single walled shed you cant realy store much
<soul-d> metals rust
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<soul-d> read the vacume pdf for a bit so if i understand that system only reaches the wanted vacume if chilled (probably by liquid nitrogen ) ?
<superkuh> Yes. You need to cool the zeolite (13x).
<superkuh> The conductance between the zeolite and main chamber should be as large as possible as well.
<soul-d> 13x stands for some industrie standard form of the zeolite stuff ?
<superkuh> Yes. If I recall correctly it absorbs nitrogen and oxygen fairly well within the structure. I cannot recall the exact width of the cavities, some tens of nm.
<superkuh> Er, wrong.
<superkuh> Sorry. angstroms.
<soul-d> i saw 8 passing by on google
<soul-d> k then makes sense why azonenberg looks at sputtering :)
<soul-d> btw you have glassblowers near you that make chemisty labware on design? cause i actually do have a few around me
<superkuh> Me? I could probably find one at the state university that's 100m away from where I am sitting. But it's too expensive.
<soul-d> heh true it would be expensive for custom stuff but this shops build chemistry labware and gassious lighting so they probably could make half sputtering thingy from the store
<azonenberg> soul-d: A sputtering apparatus would only need a bell jar and a baseplate, both of which can be bought premade
<azonenberg> the only custom work would be drilling holes in the base plate and inserting high-voltage feedthroughs
<azonenberg> and sealing appropriately to hold vacuum
<soul-d> mmm, don't forget im in tiny country only jar bell i found is cheap bottle looking one with no information
<soul-d> http://www.labstuff.nl/contents/media/1g.jpg <- is large picture and looks just like a bottle to me :)
<smeding> heh, labstuff
<smeding> love that place though i do not have the money to buy stuff there
<smeding> or enough interest, really, a lot of the time
<soul-d> heh
<soul-d> need some food bbl
<azonenberg> lol
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<berndj> is the "snooker ball" model for calculating mean free path sorta sane for estimating the MFP of an electron in a gas?
<azonenberg> Hmm, maybe? I'm not too familiar with electrostatic interactions
<berndj> just thinking of how to bootstrap a high vacuum vessel
<berndj> since apparently welds are really, really hard to make properly gas-tight
<berndj> but if electrons can get far enough, why not use a big beam of those to suture up the crude weld from the inside?
<azonenberg> Hmm, no idea
<azonenberg> Never tried building a pressure vessel
<azonenberg> always bought them
<berndj> i'm pretty sure i can't afford one :)
<soul-d> i thought id download macguyver to inspire me but it was dubbed in french :(
<soul-d> otherwise id probably make one with an elastic band some tape and a coke can
<azonenberg> lol
<berndj> that was my favourite show when i was a kid. i DON'T want to see reruns now and ruin the memory
<soul-d> true :)
<soul-d> but din't see them all :P
<azonenberg> Well right now I'm busy working on something unrelated to IC fab (yes, I do other things too :P)
<azonenberg> FPGA switching fabric design :D
<soul-d> although i have studied fpga a bit it doesn't tell me anything :P you mean the underlying tech to make the general logic ?
<azonenberg> No
<azonenberg> i mean a 16 port 12.8 Gbps-per-port switching fabric
<azonenberg> to connect various elements on my SoC
<soul-d> k, not that deep in designing yet so can't visualize it :P
<azonenberg> It's basically the equivalent of a 16-port 10gbe switch
<azonenberg> Except each packet is, instead of an ethernet frame, my own interconnect format
<azonenberg> which includes source/dest port numbers (only one device allowed per port so no MAC addressing etc), 32 bits of address, a read/write bit, and 64 bits of data if it's a write
<smeding> sounds fun
<smeding> especially compared to what i'm doing
<azonenberg> whats that?
<smeding> horribly simplistic, horribly outdated ASIC design
<azonenberg> oh, yeah you mentioned that
<smeding> well, although we test it on an FPGA
<azonenberg> the 2um SoG process?
<soul-d> got some money think gonna check out the cheap pcb chemical
<smeding> 1.6u but yeah
<azonenberg> wanna bet your asic runs slower than the fpga version? :P
<azonenberg> and lol, 1.6um is within the range of what i could be able to fab soon
<smeding> no, that isn't a very fair bet
<smeding> got ion diffusion down yet? p
<smeding> :p
<azonenberg> fair to the asic?
<smeding> yeah
<azonenberg> and i'm talking lithorgaphy
<azonenberg> doping is one of the processes i havent looked at yet
<smeding> anyway, we were basically told "don't expect the ASIC to work"
<azonenberg> LOL
<azonenberg> that bad?
<smeding> between us being second-year EE undergrads and the people fabbing it being people who have never been in a clean room before
<smeding> there is not a lot of yield
<azonenberg> lolwut?
<azonenberg> wow lol
<smeding> they save money by having the clean room course consist of fabbing the ASIC for our project
<smeding> i suppose
<azonenberg> But still, lol
<smeding> yeah it's pretty silly
<smeding> the code some people put out is ridiculous though
<smeding> i like to think what i wrote is reasonable, maybe even good VHDL
<azonenberg> lol
<azonenberg> i'm working on verilog but i'm still a relative novice
<smeding> we have some dinky IR communications project, i wrote most of the IR subsystem and helped other groups
<azonenberg> only written a few tens of thousands of lines total
<smeding> one group wrote a module that receives ASCII and determines where it goes on the little LCD we hook up
<smeding> from the IR decoder and the keyboard interface
<azonenberg> Does it work on the FPGA?
<smeding> nope
<azonenberg> Lol
<azonenberg> and you expect it to work on the asic? :P
<smeding> i've given up hope
<smeding> :p
<azonenberg> lol
<smeding> they claim they have fixed things though
<azonenberg> The fab lab class in my school uses a single mask set that's probably ten years old
<smeding> but looking at the design i don't see how anything short of a redesign could have fixed it
<azonenberg> (i havent taken it)
<azonenberg> But eevryone makes the same basic design
<azonenberg> just some caps and transistors hooked up to probe pads
<azonenberg> on a 2" wafer
<smeding> ah
<smeding> sounds reasonable
<smeding> anyway, you should see the design plans for this module... they 'designed' a D flip-flop, used it to implement a register, used two of those and a multiplexer, and it's controlled by an icky half-state-machine
<smeding> (the library comes with standard blocks and the synthesis engine is fairly intelligent)
<azonenberg> lol
<smeding> in their place i would just have made a big Moore machine and let the synth handle it
<smeding> at least at first, maybe optimisation would require me to split it up
<azonenberg> optimization? How slow is the current code?
<smeding> oh, it's not slow enough to matter
<smeding> the main limitation is chip size
<azonenberg> oh lol
<smeding> we can do 80k transistors max, and on SoG that's not that much
<azonenberg> i'm used to optimizing for speed on a giant chip
<azonenberg> and lol, 80k transistors? That's like what, 20k gates not even counting barrier transistors?
<smeding> less, probably
<azonenberg> So maybe 10k usable?
<azonenberg> and i thought my 50k gate fpga was small
<soul-d> i might have 50k if i add up all my fpga's :P
<smeding> i still can't find where the 80k limit comes from though
<soul-d> or difrent from le's ? :P
<azonenberg> lol, yes
<smeding> the manual says 200k but we were assured by the tutor the limit is 80k
<azonenberg> a LUT is several gate equivalents
<azonenberg> and a LE is usually several LUTs
<smeding> anyway an inverter occupies 4 transistor positions
<azonenberg> what about a 2NAND?
<smeding> six
<azonenberg> thats usually the definiteion of a gate-equiv
<azonenberg> i see
<smeding> then you add barrier transistors and wiring room
<smeding> and you get efficiencies of something like 30%
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<smeding> in terms of transistors used for switching vs transistor positions occupied
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<smeding> so that's like, 6k gates?
<azonenberg> lol
<azonenberg> wow
<smeding> the only groups who have a full design working on the FPGA have given up on trying to fit it onto the ASIC i think
<azonenberg> lol
<azonenberg> you could like barely fit a UART in that
<smeding> hm, then i might be exagerrating
<smeding> because we have a sort of UART, and more
<smeding> well, it's not an UART... the receive portion is ugly, from what i've seen
<azonenberg> Lol
<azonenberg> well ok, you could fit a uart and change
<azonenberg> But not too much