| --- Sat Apr 28 2012 | 00:00 | |
| B0101 | hello azonenberg | 03:58 |
|---|---|---|
| azonenberg | hi | 03:58 |
| azonenberg | been so busy lately lol... i want to finish my v2 spin coater soon | 03:59 |
| azonenberg | i just got a nice microscope too | 03:59 |
| azonenberg | nicer than the last one | 03:59 |
| azonenberg | and i want to try litho on it | 03:59 |
| B0101 | oh cool! any pictures of your new microscope? | 03:59 |
| azonenberg | http://colossus.cs.rpi.edu/pictures/2012/March/3-20-2012%20-%20microscope/S7302605.JPG | 04:01 |
| azonenberg | its a mix of olympus BH and BH2 series parts (BH body and BH2 head) | 04:01 |
| azonenberg | the stage has a 4" wafer cutout in it | 04:02 |
| azonenberg | i've been meaning to do a nice comparison between the two but havent had time | 04:03 |
| azonenberg | this is a single shot taken with the new scope http://colossus.cs.rpi.edu/~azonenberg/downloads/40x_annotated.jpg | 04:03 |
| azonenberg | i hadn't finished adjusting the illuminator so you can see it's dark on top, that got fixed since then | 04:03 |
| azonenberg | needless to say the chip isn't one of my own design :p | 04:03 |
| azonenberg | though the 1-micron 2-metal process tech is pretty close to what i migth be able to do in a couple of years :p | 04:04 |
| azonenberg | oh, and it has both brightfield and darkfield imaging capability :D | 04:05 |
| B0101 | wow | 04:05 |
| azonenberg | no NIC though | 04:06 |
| azonenberg | i'd like that eventually | 04:06 |
| azonenberg | but all the optics are $$ | 04:06 |
| azonenberg | so next on my todo list is to get some nice sodium-free quartz glassware for doing RCA cleans in | 04:07 |
| azonenberg | then buy an oxidation furnace | 04:07 |
| B0101 | wow, that going to be a lot of stuff you will have in your lab. | 04:07 |
| azonenberg | I'm going to post photos of the gear again soon | 04:08 |
| azonenberg | got a lot of new upgrades | 04:08 |
| azonenberg | do you follow my blog? I've been starting to do interesting stuff there | 04:08 |
| azonenberg | not necessarily fab related | 04:08 |
| azonenberg | http://siliconexposed.blogspot.com/ | 04:09 |
| B0101 | i will see, (very slow connection here at library) | 04:10 |
| azonenberg | Going to do a series of posts on my lab in the near future | 04:11 |
| azonenberg | then gradually update as i get new gear | 04:11 |
| B0101 | hmm, pcb fab screwups? interesting | 04:12 |
| azonenberg | Yeah, they totally borked my soldermask | 04:12 |
| B0101 | ouch | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | i got a replacement board free | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | so it was all good | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | it was actually a result of their panelization script and a bug in my gerber not playing well | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | i had a vertex outside the board perimeter | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | instead of clamping to the perimeter they deleted the entire polygon | 04:14 |
| azonenberg | the copper plane was wrecked too | 04:15 |
| azonenberg | This is my new board/firmware design lab/office btw :) http://i.imgur.com/wGemc.jpg | 04:15 |
| B0101 | wow | 04:16 |
| azonenberg | the netbook and tablet were just there to charge and i turned them on for show, they're not part of the usual combo | 04:17 |
| B0101 | ok | 04:17 |
| azonenberg | but the four big screens i use all the time, WAY more productive that way than one or two | 04:17 |
| B0101 | ok | 04:18 |
| B0101 | and i heard about H2SO4 + H3PO4 being a good semiconductor etchant. I am going to test it out | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | Hmm, interesting | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | for silicon?? | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | wonder how it works | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | i suspect it might be like HNO3+HF | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | Si -> SiO2 -> something soluble | 04:19 |
| azonenberg | It's isotropic, right? | 04:20 |
| azonenberg | not sensitive to crystal orientation like NaOH is? | 04:20 |
| azonenberg | or KOH | 04:20 |
| B0101 | well, i cannot answer these questions now untill i do a few tests, but according to some chemists, it is isotropic | 04:21 |
| azonenberg | ok | 04:21 |
| B0101 | for silicon, do you use nitric acid along with HF? | 04:27 |
| azonenberg | i havent done much Si etching yet, what i have was using KOH with a metal or oxide hardmask | 04:27 |
| azonenberg | i wasnt trying to be cmos compatible yet | 04:27 |
| B0101 | now, for some reason, all my lab glassware never survive a week in my lab | 04:30 |
| azonenberg | i havent broken any glassware in months | 04:34 |
| B0101 | its always either me or my labmates who break them, well, its a waste | 04:37 |
| azonenberg | yeah lol | 04:37 |
| azonenberg | I need to get some nice quartz | 04:37 |
| azonenberg | all of my current stuff is pyrex | 04:37 |
| azonenberg | so not cmos safe | 04:37 |
| B0101 | ok | 04:38 |
| berndj | pyrex isn't cmos-safe? what happens? | 05:03 |
| azonenberg | berndj: i just heard that from stanford | 05:04 |
| azonenberg | apparently pyrex contains enough sodium silicate | 05:04 |
| berndj | yeah, it does | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | that in some critical processes (perhaps not all of them) | 05:05 |
| berndj | i guess the sodium leaches out? | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | you get Na+ contamination | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | So it doesnt matter that i used KOH in all of my glassware (or most of it) anyway ;p | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | it wasnt cmos compatible to begin with | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | so the plan is, buy a couple of pyrex beakers | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | keep them in clean storage and only use them for RCA cleans | 05:05 |
| azonenberg | only clean with distilled water, etc | 05:06 |
| azonenberg | then get a furnac | 05:06 |
| azonenberg | furnacE* | 05:06 |
| Last message repeated 1 time(s). | 05:06 | |
| azonenberg | gah | 05:06 |
| azonenberg | and fool around with thermal oxidation | 05:06 |
| berndj | i wonder if there's a market for rentable cleanroom space | 05:07 |
| azonenberg | Lol no idea | 05:07 |
| berndj | hard disk data recovery services could use some i guess? | 05:07 |
| azonenberg | my school rents out time in their cleanroom, i know that much | 05:07 |
| azonenberg | and actually, funny story | 05:07 |
| azonenberg | i know a guy (former enginer at IBM now going for a grad degree here) | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | who had a bad hdd motor that wouldn't spin up sometimes | 05:08 |
| berndj | what sort of customers do they have (as cleanroom landlords)? | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | so he went into the cleanroom | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | opened it up | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | and tapped the rim of the platter with a gloved finger until it started spinning | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | then copied his data off :p | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | re customers, no idea | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | apparently they dont get much | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | i used a few hours on the SEM doing failure analysis for a MEMS group once | 05:08 |
| azonenberg | but i think most of their users are internal | 05:09 |
| berndj | lol. when i was a kid we had a 40MB disk (WOW! so HUGE!) that would suffer from stiction; we'd regularly have to open up the case and manually "unstick" the disk | 05:09 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:09 |
| berndj | giving it a sharp twist by hand | 05:09 |
| azonenberg | well what i find funny is that he just casually walked into the cleanroom | 05:09 |
| azonenberg | and did data recovery himself | 05:09 |
| berndj | i guess you get spoiled when you have access to labs | 05:10 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:10 |
| berndj | i can imagine chemists warming their sandwiches over a bunsen burner | 05:10 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:10 |
| azonenberg | well i'm used to having a small but well-equpped lab and am trying to expand | 05:11 |
| azonenberg | did you see the pic i posted of my firmware/CAD work area earlier? | 05:11 |
| berndj | just how clean does a data recovery cleanroom need to be? | 05:11 |
| berndj | boxes with lots of intractible-looking red lines? | 05:11 |
| azonenberg | probably class 1000 is plenty (ours is 100) | 05:11 |
| azonenberg | you only need to avoid particulates on the surface of the platter that are big enough to crash into the read-write head | 05:11 |
| azonenberg | or obstruct data reads | 05:12 |
| berndj | yeah, and you only need the particles to stay off long enough to get the data off | 05:12 |
| azonenberg | the class 100 we have is probaly enough to build drives in lol | 05:12 |
| azonenberg | Yeah | 05:12 |
| azonenberg | and no, the pic was this http://i.imgur.com/wGemc.jpg | 05:12 |
| berndj | whee, nice layout pr0n | 05:12 |
| azonenberg | Lol, wanna see the full res? | 05:13 |
| azonenberg | http://imgur.com/a/AaDb9#0 | 05:13 |
| berndj | cute dino | 05:14 |
| azonenberg | Oh, my monitor lizard? pun intended | 05:14 |
| berndj | oh a lizard, i thought it was a dinosaur | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | it is a dinosaur | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | but i didnt have any komodo dragons handy | 05:15 |
| berndj | i really need to stop dreaming about layout pr0n like that and just build a dumb audio amp or something | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | and i wanted a monitor lizard | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | that board is an FPGA based single-board computer | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | took most of a month to design | 05:15 |
| azonenberg | i'm now waiting for the board to arrive in the mail, should be here any day now | 05:16 |
| azonenberg | spartan6 XC6SLX25, 128MB nand flash, 64MB DDR SDRAM, 10/100 ethernet, four push buttons, eight LEDs, two high-speed ribbon headers with 8x 1 Gbps LVDS pairs on them plus a few single-ended IOs | 05:17 |
| azonenberg | my biggest design yet by about a factor of two or three | 05:17 |
| berndj | i have mixed feelings about this brave new world where a whole board is dominated by a "mecca" with 1000 pins | 05:22 |
| berndj | OT1H it's very impressive, but OTOH it makes the world a more magical (as in, inscrutable) place | 05:23 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:23 |
| azonenberg | well i'm writing the firmware for the fpga :p | 05:23 |
| berndj | can't we just go back to using discrete transistors? | 05:24 |
| azonenberg | so i know down to the netlist level exactly whats happening | 05:24 |
| berndj | yeah, i know, YOU as the creator know how it works, but if you find a random board lying next to the railroad, you can infer almost nothing about it | 05:24 |
| azonenberg | Oh, i can infer quite a bit | 05:24 |
| azonenberg | ever seen an FPGA naked before? | 05:24 |
| berndj | lol | 05:25 |
| azonenberg | http://cmosfold.blogspot.com/2012/04/xilinx-xc4413.html | 05:25 |
| azonenberg | from my friend's weekly centerfold blog | 05:25 |
| berndj | actually, i don't think i've ever knowingly seen an fpga at all | 05:25 |
| berndj | cmosfold is in my reader :) | 05:25 |
| azonenberg | you should check that blog out lol | 05:25 |
| azonenberg | ah | 05:25 |
| azonenberg | i think he might have gotten a little carried away with the whole silicon pr0n thing | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | lol | 05:26 |
| berndj | how do you check a layout of that complexity? do you check it, or do you just trust the netlist + layout program? | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | he has nude photo shoots every week these days :p | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | and lol | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | normally for FPGAs i write the code in Verilog | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | and unit test the heck out of it | 05:26 |
| azonenberg | test driven development is the way to go for a big system | 05:27 |
| azonenberg | write test cases based on what the system should do | 05:27 |
| azonenberg | code until they pass | 05:27 |
| azonenberg | write more tests to check for every conceivable corner case | 05:27 |
| azonenberg | fix the bugs you find | 05:27 |
| azonenberg | repeat until you can't make it break :p | 05:27 |
| berndj | and the layout itself? | 05:28 |
| berndj | i mean that you haven't accidentally wired Vcc to the ground plane | 05:28 |
| azonenberg | oh, you mean the pcb | 05:29 |
| azonenberg | or the HDL? | 05:29 |
| azonenberg | i use very differnet strategies for board vs logic design | 05:29 |
| --- Sun Apr 29 2012 | 00:00 | |
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