Mad scientist makes LEDs in his backyard — semiconductor wizard who made his own RAM turns his attention to using bathroom eBay laser to etch sapphire wafers
Mad scientist makes LEDs in his backyard — semiconductor wizard who made his own RAM turns his attention to blinkenlights
Dr. Semiconductor, Matthew Hartensveld, has been making waves with his semiconductor cleanroom in his backyard and homemade RAM cells. In an attempt to package these cells, he decided to create homemade LEDs using his bathroom eBay laser. Hartensveld began with gallium nitride atop a sapphire wafer, etching the top layer to define pattern contacts using a chlorine gas alternative and household lasers.
After etching patterns on the wafer, he tested the LED shard by applying indium to it and connecting it to a 9 V battery, which produced blue light. To improve the LED, Hartensveld cleaned the metallic gallium deposit and deposited a nickel/silver, titanium/silver, and top metal layer using argon plasma. The blue LED was then packaged using a laser to cut it from the wafer and indium bumps for wire connections, resulting in a functional white LED.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
