A hobbyist channel called Witchcraft and Alchemy hand-fabricated a flat plasma display segment from scratch, modeled closely on Burroughs' Panaplex design. The cathode is a two-layer sputter deposit: titanium first, then platinum, applied directly to glass. The titanium adhesion layer exists for one reason: platinum's molecular matrix is incompatible with bare glass, causing delamination without it.
The anode is an indium-tin oxide coating on the opposing glass face. The fill gas is argon, not neon. A 74141 Nixie driver IC gates five sputtered segments, producing a visible purple glow inside a vacuum chamber. The self-contained sealed prototype failed quickly, attributed to sealing failures using tape and epoxy that could not hold vacuum.
The next revision drops tape and epoxy entirely, replacing them with a gasket seal and conductive vias for permanent vacuum integrity. Two additional segments will bring it to a full seven-segment count. The fill gas will change from pure argon to a Penning mixture, which lowers the ionization threshold and improves discharge stability. The fabrication process itself is the reason to watch the full video.
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