Silicon Wafer Processing

Muhammad Waqas Ajmal

BEE-FA09-078 Section ( A )

Department of Electrical Engineering The University of Faisalabad

Contents
1. Introduction---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2 1.1 1.2 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 History of Integrated Circuits -----------------------------------------------------------2 What are Wafers??? ----------------------------------------------------------------------3 Wafer Preparation ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 Oxidation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4 Diffusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 Ion Implantation ---------------------------------------------------------------------------5 Chemical Vapor Deposition--------------------------------------------------------------5 Metallization---------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 Photolithography---------------------------------------------------------------------------5 Packaging ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6

IC Fabrication Steps -----------------------------------------------------------------------------3

References ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7

1. Introduction
Integrated circuits ( IC ) consists of several layers of patterned material to form FETS and interconnections. Nowadays in modern silicon processing minimum feature size is less than 0.12 m and there are chips present having more than 100 million FETs. Different techniques have been developed for chip-making.

1.1 History of Integrated Circuits

In 1958 Jack Kilby while working on his project of making small size electrical circuits at Texas Instruments tried to build all the components and the chip from a single block of material. He then implemented his idea using semiconductors and in September 1958 he developed the first Integrated Circuit, and for this great work he was awarded with Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.

Figure 1

Robert Noyce came up with his own idea for the integrated circuit. He did it half a year later than Jack Kilby. Noyce's circuit solved several practical problems that Kilby's circuit had, mainly the problem of interconnecting all the components on the chip. This was done by adding the metal as a final layer and then removing some of it so that the wires needed to connect the components were formed. This made the integrated circuit more suitable for mass production. Besides being one of the early pioneers of the integrated circuit, Robert Noyce also was one of the cofounders of Intel. Intel is one of the largest manufacturers of integrated circuits in the world. (1)
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1.2 What are Wafers???

Usually ICs are made up of semiconductor materials like Silicon or Germinium. Silicon ICs are created on large circular sheets of Silicon known as Wafers, ranging from 100-300mm in diameter and approximately 0.7mm thick. The figure given below shows us how a silicon wafer looks like.

Figure 2

The location of the IC on the wafer is known as Die site and these are the programmable locations. The Flat part of the wafer is used as a reference plane to form a grid for die placement.

2 IC Fabrication Steps
The basic steps of IC fabrication are described in this document , some of these steps may be done repeatedly with different combinations and under different conditions during a complete fabrication process. The basic steps of IC fabrication are as follows:
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2.1 Wafer Preparation

The material required for the modern IC fabrication is very high purity silicon and this is grown in the form of a single crystal known as ingot. The properties of the wafer depends on the orientation of the crystal planes and on the impurities present in the material. Each of the processing steps in the conversion of a semiconductor ingot (formed by Czochralski or Bridgeman growth) into a polished wafer ready for device fabrication, results in the removal of material from the original ingot; between 1/3 and 1/2 of the original ingot is sacrificed during processing. Methods for the removal of material from a crystal ingot are classified depending on the size of the particles being removed during the process. If the removed particles are much larger than atomic or molecular dimensions the process is described as being macro-scale. Conversely, if the material is removed atom-by-atom or molecule-bymolecule then the process is termed micro-scale. A further distinction between various types of processes is whether the removal occurs as a result of mechanical or chemical processes. The formation of a finished wafer from a semiconductor ingot normally requires six machining (mechanical) operations, two chemical operations, and at least one polishing (chemical-mechanical) operation. Additionally, multiple inspection and evaluation steps are included in the overall process. (2)

2.2 Oxidation
The chemical process in which Oxygen reacts with Silicon to produce Silicon dioxide is called Oxidation. The oxygen used in oxidation is used as a high purity gas or it is introduced in the form of steam.

2.3 Diffusion
The movement of the atoms from high concentration region to the low concentration region through a semiconductor is known as Diffusion.
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2.4 Ion Implantation

As we know that we have to add impurities to semiconductors when needed, so we use an ion implanter that adds impurities to the semiconductor and the process is known as ion implantation.

2.5 Chemical Vapor Deposition

For the formation of the solids on a silicon substrate a method is adopted known as Chemical Vapor Deposition. Also we can deposit materials like SiO2 and Si3N4 using this technique.

2.6 Metallization
The process of connecting the components with the integrated circuit is done by using different metal layers and the process is known as Metallization. In this process firstly a metal layer is deposited over the surface of the semiconductor.

2.7 Photolithography
This is the most important step of the fabrication of the integrated circuits, in this process using ultra violet light we project a bigger circuit to a much smaller surface. Thus this process enables us to develop microscopically small circuits on the silicon wafers. It further consists of two main steps i. ii. Making a photographic mask Photo etching

Figure 3

This process requires the most expensive equipment in fabrication. The circuits can be printed with the fine resolution of 50nm.

2.8 Packaging
After finishing a silicon wafer may have hundreds of circuits or chips and each chip may have billions of transistors present in it. These circuits and chips are firstly checked electrically and bad chips are marked for the recognition of the defected chips. After all the testing and marking then these circuits or chips are separated from each other and the good circuits and chips are mounted in packages and we get our desired IC. A sample IC is shown in figure below:

Figure 4

References
1. The History of the Integrated Circuit. Nobelprize.org. [Online] May 5, 2003. [Cited: September 3, 2012.] http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/integrated_circuit/history/. 2. Barron, Andrew R. Formation of Silicon and Gallium Arsenide Wafers. cnx.org. [Online] November 24, 2010. [Cited: September 03, 2012.] http://cnx.org/content/m16627/latest/.