Decapping ICs (removing epoxy packaging from chips to expose the dies)

I thought it would be interesting to try decapping some chips. This involves using fuming nitric acid, which also seemed fun, so I thought I would give it a go. The process starts by milling a precise pocket into the IC using my CNC machine. I used carbide tooling to cut the glass fiber/epoxy material. I then put a drop or two of the acid into the pocket, and raised the temperature to about 100*C. The acid dissolves the epoxy packaging as it sort of "dries". I added more acid to the pocket every few minutes. After about 10 minutes, I washed the IC in acetone, then reapplied acid if there was still material left on the die. Eventually, it was all cleared away, and I had a nice decapped IC.

Tour of Ben's shop 2012

Some people were curious about what my shop looks like, so here is a video tour. It seems that I was really rambling, since this video turned out much longer than expected.

Molecular gastronomy (playing with food): "reverse" spherification maraschino cherries

I made a puree of maraschino cherries and added 2.5g of calcium lactate gluconate. I then dripped this mixture into a solution of 2.5g of sodium alginate in 500g of water. A gelatinous skin is formed at the interface between the two liquids, forming spheres of cherry puree. This process is known as reverse spherification. I bought the chemicals here: http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Kit-Artistre-600-grams/dp/B0045KOOXU

Follow-up: Attempting to make X-rays by unrolling Scotch tape -- Success?

In this follow-up video, I show that I was able to get a P47 phosphor disc to illuminate when unrolling tape in the vacuum chamber. The blue x-ray intensifier screen did not illuminate although it was also in the chamber. Also, it seems the P47 was illuminated through a thin copper foil, though I will have to do some more tests to believe this.

Attempting to make X-rays by unrolling Scotch tape (negative result)

A few years ago, a research group posted a video showing that X-rays could be created by unrolling scotch tape in a vacuum. The idea is that the static charge generated by the mechanical unrolling process would cause electrons to accelerate to 50KV (or so), and then produce x-rays when they slam into something. I tried to recreate this experiment, but I had pretty weak results. I may need a much larger vacuum pump to keep the pressure in the chamber very low while unrolling.