Dr. Semiconductor is back in his shed, and this time he’s checking whether Joe Public can DIY themselves out of the DRAM crisis. In the video embedded below, you can see the good doctor go through the semiconductor process steps required to make an array of memory cells in a backyard shed cleanroom. This is the “first time ever RAM has been made at home,” boasts our hero.
With the existing industry incapable of addressing consumer RAM needs at attractive prices in 2026, the TechTuber asks, “I turned a shed in my back yard into a class 100 semiconductor cleanroom… but the question is, can I make my own RAM?”
Article continues belowAfter the intro, Dr. Semiconductor gives a brief description of how computer memory works, and how it is largely made up of huge arrays featuring oodles of capacitors and transistors.
Moving on to the practicalities of the job at hand, the good doctor begins by snipping a couple of silicon chips from a large sheet. This is the beginning of the preparation and cleaning stage of the chipmaking process.
Next up, we move to the initial patterning stage. A layer of oxide is built on the surface of the silicon in a high-temperature furnace. It is estimated that this layer is 330nm thick. On top of this layer, an adhesive layer and photoresist film are applied. UV exposure projects a design mask onto this newly created surface, which allows a developer solution to wash away the areas that have been hit by the light rays.
The source and drain of the transistors in the design are formed in the following steps. This involves more layer etching, doping exposed silicon to make it highly conductive, then annealing the chips to push the doping agent deeper.
Several more carefully targeted deposition and erosion steps later, we are ready for the metallization of the silicon chip. A tiny stencil is used to accurately spray the sample with aluminum, the excess stripped away, and the fully layered and formed chip is at last ready for some tests!
Checking the results
The freshly fabricated DRAM cells are so small that wires can’t be used to hook them up to test machinery by the DIYers. Micromanipulator probes are precisely positioned instead. The good news is that Dr. Semiconductor was pleased with his finished DRAM chips, as cells were measured to offer a hobbyist sweet spot of 12pF capacitance.
At the end of the video, the doc teases that he’s going to build on this significant, though admittedly small-scale, achievement. He’s looking to prepare a much larger array of finished memory cells and says that they will be prepared to “hook up to a PC.” Stay tuned for the PC-scale practical implementation, folks.
We reported on Dr. Semiconductor's creation of this garden shed-based cleanroom back in March.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
