As early as 2018, we reported the first silicon integrated circuit produced in a self-made chip factory.This is work [Sam Zeloof], His Z1 chip is an ordinary six-transistor amplifier.No one is satisfied with his crown, this time he comes back with another chip Z2 is a hundred transistor arrayZ2 occupies about a quarter of the previous generation chip area, and uses a 10µm polysilicon gate process instead of Z1’s metal gate. It will not solve the global chip shortage, but for anyone interested in building their own semiconductors, this is an important step forward.
The transistor itself is a FET, and [Sam] Satisfied with their consistency and characteristics. He did not measure the yield of all samples, but among the 12 chips he manufactured, he said he had a fully functional chip and some other chips with at least 80% functionality. Surprisingly, his process is not as complicated as people think. He believes that this is due to the careful selection of wafers that have been pretreated with an appropriate oxide layer.
You can see more information about Z2 in the video below the break.At the same time, if you want to know more about Z1, you can check [Sam’s] Hackaday Superconference’s speech on this topic. We hold our breath and look forward to the final arrival of Z3!