Essentially all of my knowledge of materials science comes from reading HN's discussion of this over the last ten days, but I've read repeatedly that these kind

Essentially all of my knowledge of materials science comes from reading HN's discussion of this over the last ten days, but I've read repeatedly that these kinds of synthesis processes are not very reliable. Even with well known materials with well known "recipes," someone trained can follow a procedure apparently to the letter and get no result, and then repeat the procedure apparently the same and get a good result. Semiconductor yield at high end fabs can be lower than 20%. If you tried that process at a new fab and wound up with a complete failure, would you say "well that process just doesn't produce any semiconductors" or would you think you might need to refine the implementation of the process.