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Hold on, if I had an electron microscope, can I just put in a decapped cheap large format photodiode under it, jack the beam current way up, and start etching trenches on it?
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I don't think so: it's a microscope, not a synchrotron. :D

I meant "drawing" on a photoresist layer with a SEM and then wet-etching it. Also all silicon in a photodiode is doped, so the etched parts would be of little use, I believe.

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And the clean environment as a whole. That's a massive investment and there are a million ways to mess that up.
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There's this guy doing clean room in a shed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dr.Semiconductor
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> however, I believe acquiring wafers of sufficient quality and depositing layers to be etched could be the bigger challenge here

Definitely hard for a home fab but how about a community fab? Not necessarily a geographic community.

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for making research grade devices you barely need a cleanroom
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wafers are the easy bit.
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