Microchip Manufacturing Process in Industry

 

You may be familiar with the fundamentals of PCB manufacturing. In PCB boards, ferric chloride is commonly used for copper etching. A flat sheet of insulating material with a layer of copper foil laminated to the substrate makes up a PCB board. In industry, there are several differences between simple PCB production and microchip fabrication. In the PCB manufacturing method, we simply attach electronic components to the PCB board, however in the microchip manufacturing process, we use a wafer (a semiconductor laminated with a conductor material such as copper) and print circuits on the wafer using ultraviolet rays.

Due to their large availability and economic efficiency, desert sands are an excellent silicon source, primarily used in semiconductor manufacturing industries. Sands (basically found in silicon compounds) are first collected, then melted at 2800 degrees Celsius to obtain pure silicon. Wafer manufacture is done with 99.9% pure silicon.

As indicated in the diagram above, we prepare circuit design using computer software. The circuit is then fed into the laser printer. Then, as illustrated in the chart, laser light is focused on the wafer to print the same circuit. The wafer is a massive semiconductor sheet or disc that may contain hundreds of microchips in general (maybe they are the same kind of chips). We often employ a convex lens to focus laser light onto a small wafer area.