![]() ![]() Most of their materials seem inexpensive to gather (germanium, indium, antimony).The techniques of transistor fabrication are much more primitive, and are therefore much more suited to beginners, and require the knowledge of far less complex chemistry.The temperatures of furnaces required for fabrication are much, much lower, in the order of hundreds of degrees Celsius, and not thousands.The pellets are also quite large – they are visible individually to the naked eye. The pellets are relatively simple to make, conceptually. The actual transistor die is created by melting pellets of indium or antimony into the very thin germanium wafer. OC44 and OC45 transistors have a circular wafer size of 1.45mm diameter. This Wikipedia Reference explains that the 600mW Mullard OC81 transistor wafer size is 2.4mm x 2.44mm. Their die-size is much larger than your average planar transistor, which means they are far better suited to making in small batches, by hand, one-at-a-time.I argue they present themselves as an attractive kind of transistor to fabricate at home in a DIY, homebrew setting because: ![]() These kinds of transistors are necessarily discrete transistors. Why Choose Alloy-Junction TransistorsĪlloy-junction transistors are not the earliest and most primitive kinds of transistors, but they are one of the earliest and most primitive. So in this article I am going to argue that one option for hackers is to fabricate not silicon, planar process FETs, but germanium, alloy-junction, Bipolar Junction Transistors.Īlloy-junction BJTs are a much older and more primitive type of transistor to fabricate than the planar process transistors that Ellsworth and Zeloof talk about, but I will argue that alloy-junction transistors present themselves as an attractive option for hackers who cannot afford expensive equipment and materials, and who have to push most of the cost of hacking onto using their own labour in order to get things done. ICs can be completely encased in plastic, shielding their components from dust, and heat, and other kinds of physical mechanical interference.īut, from studying the work of Ellsworth and Zeloof, and following up on their references, it seems that manufacturing the kind of transistors they have, in the ways they have, may still be too expensive and difficult for hackers. Discrete circuits also do not last as long as integrated circuits, because it is expensive to render them mechanically inert. ICs were a real revolution in electronics because they miniaturised sometimes enormous circuits into small, convenient packages. Sam Zeloof and Jeri Ellsworth are probably wiser to try and ‘etch FETs’ because they are much better suited to fabricating Integrated Circuits (ICs). Most of the homebrew community has been focused on fabricating Field Effect Transistors (FETs) at home. Part 0 - The Rationale for Early 1950s Transistorsīefore you ask, “Why make your own transistors at home?” – read my Manfiesto for Why. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |