American high school students make their own integrated circuits using used equipment

Thresholds for chip manufacturing are getting higher and higher, building billions of dollars at a chip factory, but none of this has given Sam Zeloof, a 17-year-old American high school student, a waiver of making his own integrated circuit dream.Using e-shops from eBay, He purchased the used equipment and raw materials, and he tried to make Intel's famous processor Intel 4004 that Intel released in 1971 (not yet in the garage).

His equipment included a high temperature oven, a vacuum chamber and a scanning electron microscope. The scanning electron microscope came from a university and was damaged, but only needed to be repaired for the next part.

The microscope, which costs $ 2,500 to persuade sellers to cut prices even lower than shipping costs, described the progress of his project through his blog, hoping to produce small-volume chips for the maker community in the future.