IC Tech: Overview

Silicon
Proccesing advantages (1-2)
1. Easily to be oxidized to form a high-quality electrical insulator
2. The oxider layer also provides an excellent barrier layer for the selective diffusion steps needed in IC fabrication
3. It's an abundant element in nature, providing the posssibility of a low-cost starting material
4. It has a wider bandgap than germanium and can therfore operate at higher temperatures than germanium.

Wafer diameter / Die Number / Cost
The larger the diameter of the wafer, the more integrated-circuit dice can be produced at one time. Wafer thickness ranges from 350 microns to 125o microns. Larger-diameter wafers must be thicker to maintain structrual integrality and planarity during the wide range of processing steps encountered during IC fabrication.

For a given wafer processing cost, the more dice per wafer, the lower the individual die cost becomes.

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Topics required to be checked:

Mask layout of BJT/MOSFET
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