Recently I saw an interesting video about chip decapping using only hot air.
It looked quite easy so I gave it a try and indeed I managed to extract three dies without breaking them or any other problems so it was 100% successful on first try.
You can see die pictures below. From left to right: GD32F103C8T6 main die, it’s flash and MAX7219
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-3-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-gd32-main-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-gd32-flash-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-gd32-flash2-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-max-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-gd32-case-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://blog.danman.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/decap-gd32-case2-768x1024.jpg)
For comparison, you can see professionally decapped GD32 by zeptobars here.
Next time I plan to use some chemical method to uncover the flash without damaging the chip and try to probe the signals while running.
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