intro.
Our Goals:
Make a DIY version of every nanofabrication tool
Get there with collaborative open source hardware
Nanofabrication labs are expensive and inaccessible. Even STEM students at "prestigious institutions" have limited - if any - access to nanofabrication tools. Chips run our world. Everyone deserves access to the tools that make them. To ensure this level of access; cheap, open source, and easily replicable nanofabrication tools are needed. Labs that make and utilize these open source tools need to appear world wide. Hacker Fab is the open source fab project making this happen. As of March 2026, seven Hacker Fabs have been established, while others are underway. Multiple critical open source fab tools have been built, documented, and duplicated. Countless devices have been demonstrated with these tools, with documented process development.
Hacker Fab has is made possible by a delocalized community of contributors. Hacker Fab can only grow to its full potential by gaining more contributors. Anyone can contribute, see the next section to learn how.
contributing to the hacker fab.
We communicate over Discord.
You don't need to build an entire fab to contribute, although you can.
Read the contribution guidelines.
You don't need prior nanofabrication experience to create meaningful contributions.
How to add your work to the gitbook:
Hit the button that says "contribute"
Find the appropriate spot in the gitbook to add your work. For new projects this may be a new page, for modifications to existing work this could be an edit or amendment to existing pages. Fill in your contributed content.
Note, if you download your working document(s) (google docs for example) as zipped .html files, you can them import them directly to a new gitbook page. This will maintain most of the content and formatting from your working document(s).
Submit a merge request; select Jay Kunselman and Alexander Hakim as reviewers.
Expect a message approving your merge request, or asking for revisions to your merge request.
this website.
This page is a home for all shared documentation. There are enough resources here to turn an empty room into one that fabricates simple IC's in a matter of months.
Many pages are works-in-progress. It is natural for individual contributors' work-in-progress notes to exist on google drive, notion, etc. Links to these exist at the top of each page, however these notes move to Gitbook as soon as possible.
Any contributor can submit change requests with a free Gitbook account. All of this is on Github, but formatted nicely here on Gitbook. You can contribute directly through Github as well.
For the most up-to-date status on everything, join the Discord.
fab toolkit.
RF Sputtering Chamber
Build Chamber + Magnetron for $1,000
Build Power supply for $1,000
Buy dual gas supply components for $5,000
Buy pumping system + gauge for $11,400
Carnegie Mellon
3-Axis Piezo Nanopositioner
Build for $500
verification / metrology tools.
chemicals.
Photoresists + Developers
Dielectrics
Conductors
Etchants
Dopant Sources
background and licensing.
The Hacker Fab was inspired by Sam Zeloof.
The Hacker Fab was started by Elio Bourcart, Alexander Hakim, and Sam Zeloof at Carnegie Mellon University (Thank you to CMU ECE dept, who's support catalyzed the project).
The first Hacker Fab @ CMU is and currently managed by Matthew Moneck, Tathagata Srimani, and Jay Kunselman.
By default, all contributions use the following license stack, but may carry an additional NOTICE file depending on the origin of the contribution.
Hardware: CERN-OHL-W
For example, if you release HDL files under CERN-OHL-W and then somebody uses those files in their FPGA, when they distribute the bitstream (either putting it online or shipping a product with it) they do not to make the rest of the HDL design available under CERN-OHL-W as well.
https://ohwr.org/project/cernohl/wikis/faq#q-what-are-all-these-suffixes
Software: MPL v2.0
The MPL’s “file-level” copyleft is designed to encourage contributors to share modifications they make to your code, while still allowing them to combine your code with code under other licenses (open or proprietary) with minimal restrictions.
Documentation: CC BY-SA 4.0
This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/
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