To make semiconductors, you need the capability of reaching very high temperatures, usually around 1000 degrees Celsius! This is well beyond the range of most household devices, so my toaster oven isn’t going to cut it. Semiconductor labs usually use a special kind of furnace called a tube furnace. The tube furnace is simply a quartz glass tube surrounded by a heating element and insulation. I bought a quartz tube from McMaster-Carr for $20 and wound some 22g nichrome wire around it and insulated the whole thing with some alumina ceramic wool and hooked it up to a variac as a proof-of-concept. I was able to reach 1000°C with only about 300W of power, which was actually a lot lower than I expected. Now I just need to put this in a proper enclosure, write some code, and I should be good to go! (famous last words!)