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Sand
With about 25% (mass) Silicon is -after Oxygen -the second most frequent chemical element in the earth's crust. Sand -especially Quartz -has high percentages of Silicon in the form of Silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the base ingredient for semiconductor manufacturing.
Melted Silicon
Silicon is purified in multiple steps to finally reach semiconductor manufacturing quality which is called Electronic Grade Silicon. Electronic Grade Silicon may only have one alien atom every one billion Silicon atoms. In this picture you can see how one big crystal is grown from the purified silicon melt. The resulting mono crystal is called an Ingot.
Mono-crystal Silicon Ingot
An ingot has been produced from Electronic Grade Silicon. One ingot weights about 100 kilograms (=220 pounds) and has a Silicon purity of 99.9999999%
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Ingot Slicing
The Ingot is cut into individual silicon discs called wafers. The thickness of a wafer is about 1mm.
Wafer
The wafers are polished until they have flawless, mirror-smooth surfaces. Intel buys those manufacturing ready wafers from third party companies. Intel's highly advanced 32nm High-K/Metal Gate process uses wafers with a diameter of 300 millimeter (~12 inches).When Intel first began making chips, the company printed circuits on 2-inch (50mm) wafers. Now the company uses 300mm wafers, resulting in decreased costs per chip
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Fabrication of chips on a wafer consists of hundreds of precisely controlled steps which result in a series of patterned layers of various materials one on top of another. What follows is a sample of the most important steps in this complex process.
Applying Photo Resist
Fabrication of chips on a wafer consists of hundreds of precisely controlled steps which result in a series of patterned layers of various materials one on top of another. What follows is a sample of the most important steps in this complex process. In this image there's photo resist (blue color) applied, exposed and exposed photo resist is being washed off before the next step (more details later).
Ion Implantation
The wafer is patterned using photolithography (details of how this is done will be described later). The wafer is bombarded with a beam of ions (positively or negatively charged atoms) which embed themselves beneath the surface of the wafer to alter the conductive properties of the silicon in selected locations. The green regions in the image to the right have these implanted alien atoms.
Removing Photo Resist
After the ion implantation the photo resist will be removed and the material that should have been doped (green) has alien atoms implanted
Applying High-k Dielectric
Instead of a traditional insulator between a transistor's gate and its channel, Intel applies multiple layers of High-K dielectric material to the surface of the wafer. This material is applied one atomic layer at a time (yellow in the image). This reduces electrical leakage and enables more energy-efficient processors.
Applying High-k dielectric
There are multiple layers of individual molecule layers being applied to the surface of the wafer. The two yellow layers shown here represent two of these layers.
High-k Dielectric
This step shows how the High-k insulator has been applied to the whole wafer. The High-k material is thicker than the traditional Silicon-Dioxide layer while it has the same capacitive properties to maximize performance. Due to the increased thickness less current leaks through this innovative insulator.
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Applying Photo Resist
The liquid (dark color here) that's poured onto the wafer while it spins is a photo resist finish similar as the one known from film photography. The wafer spins during this step to allow very thin and even application of this photo resist layer.
Exposure
The photo resist finish is exposed to ultra violet (UV) light. The chemical reaction triggered by that process step is similar to what happens to film material in a film camera the moment you press the shutter button. The photo resist finish that's exposed to UV light will become soluble. The exposure is done using masks that act like stencils in this process step. When used with UV light, masks create the various circuit patterns on each layer of the microprocessor. A lens (middle) reduces the mask's image. So what gets printed on the wafer is typically four times smaller linearlythan the mask's pattern.
Exposure
Although usually hundreds of microprocessors are built on a single wafer, this picture story will only focus on a small piece of a microprocessor from now on -on a transistor or parts thereof. A transistor acts as a switch, controlling the flow of electrical current in a computer chip. Intel researchers have developed transistors so small that about 30 million of them could fit on the head of a pin
Washing off of Photo Resist
The gooey photo resist is completely dissolved by a solvent. This reveals a pattern of photo resist made by the mask (dark rectangle here).
Etching
The photo resist is protecting the high-k dielectric that should not be etched away. Revealed material will be etched away with chemicals.
Removing Photo Resist
After the etching the photo resist is removed and the desired shape becomes visible.
Ready Transistor
This transistor is close to being finished. Three holes have been etched into the insulation layer (red color) above the transistor. These three holes will be filled with copper or other material which will make up the connections to other transistors
Electroplating
The wafers are put into a copper sulphate solution at this stage. The copper ions are deposited onto the transistor thru a process called electroplating. The copper ions travel from the positive terminal (anode) to the negative terminal (cathode) which is represented by the wafer.
After Electroplating
On the wafer surface the copper ions settle as a thin layer of copper.
Polishing
The excess material is polished off.
Metal layers
Multiple metal layers are created to interconnect (think: wires) in between the various transistors. How these connections have to be "wired" is determined by the architecture and design teams that develop the functionality of the respective processor.While computer chips look extremely flat, they may actually have over 30 layers to form complex circuitry. If you look at a magnified view of a chip, you will see an intricate network of circuit lines and transistors that look like a futuristic, multi-layered highway system.
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When wafer processing is complete, the wafers are transferred from the fabto an assembly/test facility.There, the individual die are first tested, then the they are singulatedand the ones that passed their test are packaged. Finally, a thorough test of the packaged part is conducted before the finished product is shipped.
When wafer processing is complete, the wafers are transferred from the fabto an assembly/test facility.There, the individual die are first tested, then the they are singulatedand the ones that passed their test are packaged. Finally, a thorough test of the packaged part is conducted before the finished product is shipped.
Wafer Sort Test
This fraction of a ready wafer is being put to a first functionality test. In this stage test patterns are fed into every single chip and the response from the chip monitored and compared to "the right answer".
This fraction of a ready wafer is being put to a first functionality test. In this stage test patterns are fed into every single chip and the response from the chip monitored and compared to "the right answer".
Wafer Slicing
The wafer is cut into pieces (called dies). For the Intel® Core™ i5 processor there's one wafer of graphics chips and one wafer of CPU chips. The above wafer contains the CPUs
Discarding faulty DiesThe dies that responded with the right answer to the test pattern will be put forward for the next step (packaging).
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Individual Die
These are individual dies which have been cut out in the previous step (slicing). The dies shown here are dies of an Intel® Core™ i5 Processor (small die = CPU; larger die = HD graphics).
These are individual dies which have been cut out in the previous step (slicing). The dies shown here are dies of an Intel® Core™ i5 Processor (small die = CPU; larger die = HD graphics).
Packaging The substrate, the dies and the heatspreader are put together to form a completed processor. The green substrate builds the electrical and mechanical interface for the processor to interact with the rest of the PC system. The silver heatspreader is a thermal interface where a cooling solution will be put on to. This will keep the processor cool during operation.
Processor
Completed processor
Completed processor
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Class TestingDuring this final test the processors will be tested for their key characteristics (among the tested characteristics are power dissipation and maximum frequency).
Binning
Based on the test result of class testing processors with the same capabilities are put into the same transporting trays.
Based on the test result of class testing processors with the same capabilities are put into the same transporting trays.
Retail Package
The readily manufactured and tested processors (again Intel® Core™ i5 Processor is shown here) either go to system manufacturers in trays or into retail stores in a box such as that shown here.
The readily manufactured and tested processors (again Intel® Core™ i5 Processor is shown here) either go to system manufacturers in trays or into retail stores in a box such as that shown here.
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