What are Semiconductors?

1. Mask operations

Engineers take digital blueprints and convert them into glass templates, called masks. They are used in fabrication photolithography, or “printing with light.” As the mask engineers finish each mask, they send them to fabrication factories — or fabs — to begin manufacturing.

What are masks?

Masks are templates used to print circuitry onto a silicon wafer. Mask engineers use computerized drawings from chip designers as blueprints. Those drawings are fed into machines that convert the data into an electronic beam that replicates the circuitry pattern onto 6-by-6 inch pieces of quartz just a quarter-inch thick. These quartz squares are called masks. It can take more than 50 masks to make all the layers of a chip.

2. Fabrication

Technicians wear bunny suits and use high-tech equipment in clean rooms to create layers of circuits and devices on silicon wafers. Each wafer will contain hundreds of chips. From here, the fab sends the finished wafers to die/sort prep facilities.

What is photolithography?

Silicon wafers are made from the silicon extracted from sand. Techs use photolithography machines to shine light through the masks to re-create patterns. A lens reduces the image and directs it onto a wafer’s surface. This is done repeatedly using a different mask for each layer of transistors and wire connections. Eventually the wafer will be imprinted with hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny individual chips.

3. Die/sort prep

In these facilities, diamond saws cut the wafers into thousands of fingernail-size individual rectangles, each called a die or computer chip. Die and sort prep
machines cherry-pick the working chips and hand them off to another machine that places them onto reels. These are sent to assembly and test plants.

4. Assembly and test

Here, technicians take each die and test them one last time to make sure they’re healthy and good to go. If they pass, they’re mounted between a heat spreader and a substrate to form a sleek, enclosed package. The exterior package protects die from damage, heat and contaminants. Inside a computer, the package forms electrical connections between the chip and the circuit board.

5. Finished goods warehouses/hubs

From here, logistics professionals may send chips directly to some customers, such as system manufacturers. Or they ship them to global distribution hubs. From these hubs, chips might be sent to original equipment manufacturers in trays or be boxed for retail sale.