How Chips Are Made?May 21st, 2013

Agenda

• Introduction• How Chips are made?• How Transistors are made?• How Chips are made?• Question and Answers

A Little Company History

• Founded in July 18, 1968 by Gordon Moore, and Robert Noyce

• Based in Santa Clara California• No. of employees ~110,000• Serves ~Worldwide• Products: Bluetooth chipsets,

flash memory, microprocessors, motherboards chipsets, and network interface cards

A Little Chip History• First chip built in 1971 called Intel®

4004 processor• Initial clock speed: 108KHz• Transistors: 2,300• Manufacturing technology: 10 micron

42 years later

• In 2012 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor

• Initial clock speed: 2.9GHz• Transistors: 1.4 billion• Manufacturing technology: 22nm

How Chips Are Made? From Sand to Silicon• Sand:• 25% silicon• 2nd frequent chemical found on earth• Base ingredients for semiconductor mfg

• Mono-crystal Si Ingot• Electronic Grade si• Weights 100Kg, with purity

99.9999%

• Melted Silicon• Wafer level ~300 mm/12in• Purified through mfg/chemi process to

electronic grade si, 1 ailen atom/one billion si atom

• The crystal Product results in mono crystal called Ingot

Cutting

Ingot SiliconCut into individual si discs

called wafer Polished to flawless surface

• Applying Photo (print) resist• A thin/even Blue liquid , photo resist

finish, is poured to make a layer

UV Exposing• Just like what happens to film material in

a film camera when you press the shutter button

• When photo exposedSoluble• The exposure is done using circuit masks

pattern• Each die on each wafer contains millions

of transistors

How A transistor is made?• What is a transistor?• A transistor acts as a switch, controls the flow

of electrical current• Intel makes 30m of them on the head of a pin

• Etching (Cutting) & Removing Photo Resist• Extra material is cut, but photo resist is

left• Photo resist is removed by chemicals and

desired shape becomes visible

• Washing Off of Photo Resist• The liquidly photo resist is dissolved by a

solvent, revealing patterns made by mask• finish, is poured to make a layer

How A transistor is made?• Applying Photo resist• The area is exposed to photo resist material so

should not get ions implanted. Ions are electrically charged atoms, +/- electrons

• Removing Photo Resist• The green material is the doped material

with alien atoms implanted

• Ion Implantation• To increase conductivity, ions are added

(doped) at very high speed to wafer (300,000 km/hr)

How A transistor is made?• Ready Transistor• Insulation layer (magenta) is added• Three holes are dogged & filled copper• The filled copper is used to connect to other

transistors

• After Electroplating• On the surface the copper ions settle as a

thin layer of copper

• Electroplating• The si wafer is put into a copper sulphate• The copper ions travel from positive

terminal (anode) to negative terminal (cathode). This is called electroplating

How A transistor is made?• Polishing• The excess material is polished off.

How Chips Are Made? From Sand to Silicon• Metal Layer• Transistors are placed next to each other

according to design/architecture• Metal layers are created to wire between

transistors• Chips are made of several different wire

layers, just like a multi-layered highway• Wafer Sort Test• Functional test are run through each chip,

test response is compared to the right answer. If no correct answer, debug or scrap

How Chips Are Made? From Sand to Silicon• Wafer Slicing• The wafer is cut into pieces of passed (good) dies

Chip Diagram

How Chips Are Made? From Sand to Silicon

• Individual Die• An individual die cut through slicing

• Processor• Complete process

• Packaging• The substrate, the die and the

ehatspreader are put together