Safe HF Etching at Home with an Etch Chamber

[aianyoung]

It makes sense that a bit of HF would be in rust remover, but that creeps me out a bit.

[OlvinJanoisin]

i love you!

[nemesisgeek]

Interesting idea, I should try that some time.

As of now I do all of my etching on single dies (delayering for RE) so I'm working with only a few hundred microliters at a time and haven't needed to use that much at a time (i.e. no concerns about vapors)

I wear a Tyvek lab coat, splash goggles and polycarbonate face shield, and double gloves - Norfoil as the inner (and primary protection) layer and nitrile over the outside to increase dexterity. There's zero exposed skin with that setup.

[shodanxx]

I was completely wrong, I thought she was etching copper off fiberglass and not silicon wafers

[shodanxx]

why aren't people using 30% hydrochloric acid and 35% hydrogen peroxide ?

you can get that at the hardware store and pharmacy, like under 5$ for 2 liters of solution and it works great !!!

(except the fumes will make everything rust in the garage if you leave it in an open container for a week, oops)

but it's so much safer

[pratt123]

@shodanxx Yeah, even sulfuric acid is safer than HF acid.

[adshea507]

@shodanxx because those cannot etch quartz (SiO2) with any effectiveness. If you want to see the other nasty stuff they etch with go look at the "Etching (microfabrication)" Wikipedia page.

[pumkinvine]

The paddle appears to be the piece left from cutting there slot?

[kinglonewolf104]

I work in a lab, and have been told that doubling up on gloves increases the chance of them tearing. However, we used poor quality gloves in the past which would tear for no real reason at all - not good when working with sewage samples or concentrated acids (mainly hydrochloric, phosporic and sulphuric).

.

&eB

[HD41117]

Excellent! Thanks Jeri.