©2008 R. Gupta, UCSD

COSMOS Summer 2008

Chips and Chip Making

Rajesh K. GuptaComputer Science and Engineering

University of California, San Diego.

Roadmap• Topic:

– Integrated circuit chips• This lecture

– IC Chips, Chip making ingredients and steps.• Reference

– “How chips are made” – Intelhttp://www.intel.com/education/makingchips/index.htm

– “Microelectronics 101” – IBMhttp://www-306.ibm.com/chips/technology/makechip

©2008 R. Gupta, UCSD

Keywords:

The Chip: A Packaged Part

http://education.netpack-europe.org/chipp.php

Quad Flat Pack (QFP)

Ball Grid Array (BGA)

The Die Under a Microscope

Intel 4004 (‘71)Intel 4004 (‘71)Intel 8080Intel 8080 Intel 8085Intel 8085

Intel 8286Intel 8286 Intel 8486Intel 8486

A Gate Layout

Defines a set of “masking layers” for printing purposes.

The Ingredients• Silicon Wafers cut from an ingot of pure silicon.

• Chemicals and gases are used throughout the chip-making process.

• Metals, such as aluminum and copper, are used to conduct the electricity throughout the microprocessor. Gold is also used to connect the actual chip to its package.

• Ultraviolet (UV) Light has very short wavelengths and is just beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum.

• Masks used in the chip-making process are like stencils. When used with UV light, masks create the various circuit patterns on each layer of the chip.

[Courtesy Intel. Adapted from http://www.intel.com/education/teachtech/learning/chips/preparation.htm]

Building Chip

• Start with a disk of silicon called wafer• 75 mm to 300 mm in diameter, < 1 mm thick• cut from ingots of single-crystal silicon

• pulled from a crucible of pure molten polycrystalline silicon using a seed crystal

• Different processing steps and techniques• Introduce dopants• Oxidation• Masking• Polysilicon

Introduce Dopants

• Pure silicon is a semiconductor• bulk electrical resistance in between that of a conductor

and insulator• Conductivity of silicon can be varied several

orders of magnitude by introducing impurity atoms

• called dopants• acceptors: accept electrons to leave holes in silicon

• lead to p-type silicon (e.g. Boron)• donors: provide electrons to silicon

• lead to n-type silicon (e.g. Arsenic, Phosphorous)

Introduce Dopants (2) • Deposition through diffusion

– evaporating dopant material into the silicon surface

– thermal cycle: impurities diffuse deeper into material

• Ion Implantation– silicon surface subjected to highly

energized donor or acceptor atoms• atoms impinge silicon surface, and

drive below it to form regions of varying concentrations

Ion Implantation

Oxidation• Method 1: Heating silicon wafers in an

oxidizing atmosphere (O2 or H2O)• Consumes Si• Grows equally in both vertical directions

• Method 2: Deposition• Deposited on top of existing layers

Masking

• Masks act as barrier against e.g.• ion implantation• dopant deposition before diffusion (dopants do not

reach surface)• oxidation (O2 or H2O does not reach surface)

• Commonly used mask materials• photoresist• polysilicon• silicon dioxide (SiO2)• silicon nitride (SiN)

Example: oxide maska. bare silicon wafer

b. oxidize wafer

c. deposit layer of photoresist

d. expose the photoresist selectively to UV light

• The drawn mask pattern determines which part is exposed

• Resist polymerizes where exposed

e. unexposed resist is removed with solvent: negative resist

(positive resist: exposed resist is removed)

f. exposed oxide is etched

g. photoresist is washed off

h. the oxide can now be used as a masking layer for ion implantation

The Printing Challenge

UV lithography: line width limited by diffraction and alignment tolerances, but tricks are used Electron beam lithography has emerged: directly from digital data, but more costly and slow

Polysilicon

• Silicon also comes in a polycrystalline form• called polysilicon, or just poly• high resistance

• normally doped at the same time as source/drain regions• Used as

• an interconnect in silicon ICs• gate electrode in MOS transistors• most important: acts as a mask to allow precise definition of

source and drain extension under gate• minimum gate to source/drain overlap improves circuit

performance (why?)• called self-aligned process

The Design Process

Packaging

Single die

Wafer

From http://www.amd.com