Semiconductor Technologies Guide

An anonymous reader writes "X-bit labs have posted an interesting article on manufacturing technologies used in the semiconductor industry. Good reading if you want to get a really indepth idea of technologies used for semiconductor manufacturing by IBM, Intel, AMD, and others."

Comments

Nano-tube technology and it's application:

[antispamist]

Can carbon nanotube be used in CPU production? From what I understand some are conductive with low radiation and others are excellent insulators.

The article talks about "spontaneous electron movement from the negatively charged silicon substrate of the channel to the positively charged gate."

I guess I am just curious as I recently wrote a paper on their applications and I would like to hear from someone a little more technically knowledgable than me. Anyone have any real knowledge or some *easy* links they could share?

Re:Nano-tube technology and it's application:

[Wakkow]

I'm not sure I can answer your question, but I want to clarify something. I found this on google: diagram of a mosfet transistor.

Here's a simplified explanation. Think of a switch with source at one terminal and drain on the other. When sitting without a voltage on the gate, the source and drain are not connected. When the switch is turned on (ie. gate high), electrons are allowed through the pathway created.

Anyways, the yellow in the diagram is an insulator. The switching is all done without touching the doped silicon connecting the source and the drain. My point is that the silicon needs to be there. It's integral to how the switching works. I don't know anything about nano-tubes but it cannot replace the silicon unless it can act like a semiconductor (both as a conductor and insulator depending on temp, etc). Perhaps it could replace the SiO2 currently used as the insulating layer but no matter what, the smaller the channels get, the more the electrons are going to want to jump..

Anyone that knows more about SOI want to comment?

woah

[ergonal]

Wow, I'd like to say sorry to whoever's member is shown on the last page! That's TINY man!

check out the comparison b/c transistor and virus

[lingqi]

between the transistor and an influenza (closely related to SARS) virus, no less.

I don't think it shows the smallness of the transistor as much as I suddenly realized how much further we have to go before hitting biological complexity.

the surface of the virus has crazy number of protein receptors that allows it to latch onto only the proper cells, and inside a strand of genetic material that contains thousands, if not millions of ACGT pairs - which puts information density of our most hardcore RAM at a great shame. Actually there are probably other stuff inside, but IANAVirologist.

Looooong road ahead...

side note: I don't think the gearheads are so obsessed about the manufacturing process for cars, nor the martha-stuart followers the manufacturing process for triple flower-pattern guest-only bath towels, why are geeks sooooo into the photolithography process?

Anybody wants to offer an explanation?

etching

[romit_icarus]

I used to be part of the surface physics research community that looked into how to etch more finer than we currently do so. Saw this so I thought I'd add the little I learnt there.

Conventional etching uses plasma. Plasma is a soup of charged particles of energy of the order of a kev (1000 electron volts). It's use is mostly dictated by the fact that we understand how to create it quite well, rather than in our understanding of what is/are the consituents of plasma that actually effect the etching action.

What is found that the etching process sensitive to the charge element, to the quantum state of the incident ions, to its energy, to the angle of incidence. And of course this is purely from the beam side, from the surface point of view there are a lot more variables...

Did you know that the molecular process that does etching is very similar to that that creates a radio blackout in the space shuttle while reentry? Somewhat cool

Re:check out the comparison b/c transistor and vir

[brarrr]

There is an industry with much higher rate of advancement. Since the introduction of disposable diapers, their ability to absorb effectively has outpaced the shrinkage rate for effective processors. Thats one of the little 'facts' we bring up in our intro to engineering classes in materials engineering. Weird, but true.

holy poorly written batman!

[Oo.et.oO]

this is THE most poorly written article i've actually tried to read on the web in years.

"Besides, the characteristics of the channel become more predictable, while the transistor itself - more robust to various errors, like those provoked by space particles that may get into the channel and ionize it."

i'm not even going to get into the english, which quite frankly is horrid. "robust to errors"? "space particles" (yes i know what he's trying to say)? "ionize it"? ionize the channel? (yes again, i understand he means the carriers, but that's not what happens)

most of his information is unsubstantiated at best. There are no references nor citations. Most of it seems somewhat accurate but only because i understand what they were TRYING to say. If i didn't know about fab tech to begin with i would have been very misled.

If you want to know about semiconductor fabrication technology, do yourself a favor and borrow a textbook from your EE budies, then read up in journals.