A YouTuber on a mission to liberate semiconductor manufacturing from the grip of multinational megacorporations is back with a new round of DIY success, this time manufacturing working LEDs in his backyard fab.Dr. Semiconductor, also known as semiconductor engineer Dr. Matthew Hartensveld, per his recently launched website, first caught the internet’s attention five months ago when he built a class-100 cleanroom in a shed in his backyard. Back in April, we wrote about his successful project to build his own DRAM in the clean shed, and the video he posted over the weekend on building his own LEDs follows that project with more ingenious success. Hartensveld’s decision to construct his own LEDs is directly connected to his RAMbitions, mind you - this isn’t some side project to light stuff up for fun.
As Hartensveld notes in the video’s introduction, working DRAM cells are great, but they’re a far cry from functional DDR5 chips that can be plugged into a computer in lieu of ever-costlier chips from a major manufacturer. Turning cells into a RAM chip requires a lot more fabrication and packaging work, but there’s a problem there: attaching a finished silicon die to a circuit board requires lining up a whole bunch of tiny contacts with corresponding pads on the board. Because silicon is opaque to visible light, it takes more work to get everything aligned correctly.
