Can you imagine living in a world without cell phones? You know what? anti vibration table If there were no semiconductors, people would not be able to have lightweight mobile phones! In fact, the comfort and convenience of modern life is dependent on the rotation of semiconductors! What is the semiconductor we often hear about?

How computers work

Before discussing semiconductors, we must first understand how computers work.

A computer is a highly complex computer, and we can try to understand that the most complex operations are based on the most basic mathematical operations.

We think of the transistor, the most basic component of a computer chip, as a switch. semiconductor test Using the characteristics of semiconductors that can control whether the current can pass through, the transistor is switched on or off by the change of current, so that the machine can read the binary information composed of 0 or 1, and then complete the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations that all pupils can understand!

If the number of data transistors to calculate, the faster the current changes, the computer can improve the speed of the human brain can not keep up with large amounts of data, and show a lot of functions!

As technology advances, chips get smaller and smaller, and chips can be installed on more and more transistors!

The invention of semiconductor components

In a world before the invention of semiconductors, voltage probe computers were invented. Before the semiconductor was used as a current switch, the scientists created a vacuum environment in a glass instrument similar to a light bulb and changed the voltage so that it switched between 0 and 1.

However, the production of glass vacuum tubes is not easy, expensive, and consumes a lot of power, and the volume is huge, and the volume of a glass vacuum tube computer can even occupy the entire room, or even the entire building. Worst of all, glass vacuum tubes often overheated and damaged, maintenance required a lot of mental effort, and computer operations were often shut down.

As a result, few people outside of defense and cutting-edge R&D units, or large corporations, can afford computers so large and fragile that they can eat electric monsters. Without the help of computers in people's lives, even repetitive tasks can only be completed by manpower.

The first computer, ENIAC, in 1942, had eighteen thousand vacuum tubes. As of 2021, this is a single chip Apple computer (m1max) with 57 billion transistors!

Until 1958, kilby, a scientist from Texas Instruments, used semiconductors to make the first integrated circuit (IC chip), and Noyce, a scientist from Express, simultaneously invented a series circuit and a chip with three transistors. The two engineers are credited with inventing the chip.

As mentioned earlier, semiconductors are materials whose physical properties lie between conductive metals and non-conductive insulators, and are the most readily available elements on Earth: silicon is the primary semiconductor material.

The invention of integrated circuit (chip) has greatly changed human life! Now the chip has become an indispensable material to promote the world! Every small appliance in life, such as hair dryers, coffee makers, mobile phones, computers, cars, and even the most advanced space rockets and defense weapons are operated by chips.

Why do semiconductors need to be produced in clean rooms?

As demand grows and technology advances rapidly, current chips are made using very large integrated circuit technology, which assembles billions of transistors much smaller than a red blood cell onto a chip smaller than a fingernail, so even a speck of dust in the manufacturing process can be a disaster, like a large meteorite hitting a city.

Therefore, the chip manufacturing process must take place in a clean, uncluttered laboratory: a special room with strict control over dust, airborne microorganisms, suspended particles, and chemically volatile gases. Everyone entering the clean room needs to be fully armed, put on clean clothes, hat covers, shoe covers, wear a mask, and pass the strong wind to blow away the dust on their bodies. To maintain such a highly clean plant, coupled with the value of the machine setup, the cost of maintaining the operation is staggering! The ability to operate these complex instruments is more difficult to develop, so setting up a semiconductor factory is not easy.

How are the chips produced?

Take cell phone chips, for example. IC chips are like the organs of mobile phones, with CPU, phone calls, Internet, photos and other functions. IC design engineers design chips according to the requirements set by mobile phone designers, as well as the differences in the individual functions of different chips, such as camera shutter speed, photo sharpness, Internet speed, screen resolution, call quality, and so on.

IC manufacturers manufacture wafers according to the design drawings, but the need to fit hundreds of millions of nanometer-sized transistors in the right place on a 12-inch wafer is far beyond the limits of humanity! What should I do? The clever engineer cleverly exploited the properties of light.

Simply put, after coating the wafer surface with a photoresist film, it emits ultraviolet light, projects the design onto the photoresist coated wafer, and then dissolves the excess photoresist in a special chemical solution, leaving behind a photoresistance that is an accurate circuit diagram. Finally, the photoresist is washed off with another chemical and the wafer is treated.

These wafers are then sent to integrated circuit testing companies to be cut, packaged into chips that can be assembled inside the phone, and tested to see if they work properly. The chip with the seal test completed can be delivered to the customer for mobile phone assembly. The quality of the mobile phone is closely related to the output of the chip!

After listening to these explanations, do you know more about semiconductors and the semiconductor industry?

The next time you see a semiconductor story, you can understand it more clearly!