Making Silicon Chips Making Silicon Chips The surprising process behind Intel® technology The world’s most advanced manufacturing Today silicon chips are everywhere. Intel creates industry-leading and world-first silicon products. These Intel® chips are some of the most complex devices ever manufactured, requiring advanced manufacturing technology. Step into a modern "fab" where Intel makes its chips, and you’ll discover a range of sophisticated processes spanning close to a million square feet of space. See the steps involved > Driving all forms of digital innovation Intel chips power Ultrabook™ devices, smartphones, tablets, high performance computing, data centers, and the Internet. They automate factories and are embedded in automobiles and everyday devices. The most sophisticated processor can contain hundreds of millions or billions of transistors interconnected by fine wires made of copper. Each of these transistors acts as an on/off switch, controlling the flow of electricity through the chip to send, receive, and process information. Chips today may have multiple cores. Silicon Silicon, the principal ingredient in beach sand, is a natural semiconductor and the most abundant element on Earth except for oxygen. Wafers To make wafers, silicon is purified, melted, and cooled to form an ingot, which is then sliced into discs called wafers.

Chips are built simultaneously in a grid formation on the wafer surface in a fabrication facility or “fab.” Chips A chip is a complex device that forms the brains of every computing device. While chips look flat, they are three-dimensional structures and may include as many as 30 layers of complex circuitry. Clean rooms Chips are fabricated in batches of wafers in clean rooms that are thousands of times cleaner than hospital operating rooms. Bunny suits Fab technicians wear special suits, nicknamed bunny suits, designed to keep contaminants such as lint and hair off the wafers during chip manufacturing. Design The way a chip works is the result of how a chip’s transistors and gates are designed and the ultimate use of the chip. Design specifications that include chip size, number of transistors, testing, and production factors are used to create schematics—symbolic representations of the transistors and interconnections that control the flow of electricity though a chip. Designers then make stencil-like patterns, called masks, of each layer. Designers use computer-aided design (CAD) workstations to perform comprehensive simulations and tests of the chip functions. To design, test, and fine-tune a chip and make it ready for fabrication takes hundreds of people.

Fabrication and test The "recipe" for making a chip varies depending on the chip’s proposed use. Making chips is a complex process requiring hundreds of precisely controlled steps that result in patterned layers of various materials built one on top of another. A photolithographic "printing" process is used to form a chip’s multilayered transistors and interconnects (electrical circuits) on a wafer. Hundreds of identical processors are created in batches on a single silicon wafer. Once all the layers are completed, a computer performs a process called wafer sort test. The testing ensures that the chips perform to design specifications. High-performance packaging After fabrication, it's time for packaging. The wafer is cut into individual pieces called die. The die is packaged between a substrate and a heat spreader to form a completed processor. The package protects the die and delivers critical power and electrical connections when placed directly into a computer circuit board or mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. Intel makes chips that have many different applications and use a variety of packaging technologies. Intel packages undergo final testing for functionality, performance, and power. Chips are electrically coded, visually inspected, and packaged in protective shipping material for shipment to Intel customers and retail.

What element is used to make computer chips? | Reference.com What element is used to make computer chips? A: Quick Answer Silicon is used to make computer chips. A computer chip is an integrated circuit that processes information. It is composed of transistors, resistors, capacitors and diodes. Full Answer In photolithography, ultraviolet light is shined onto a photosensitive film on a piece of silicon to create a pattern of conducting and isolating layers as it breaks apart. The circuit is built up with many of these silicon layers and covered in metal. Finally, another photosensitive film is used to form a pattern for the wires. Stepping is an efficient method for producing computer chips. It quickly creates chips one after another by exposing a large silicon wafer to ultraviolet light in sections. The silicon used in computer circuits is pure silicon crystal to ensure perfection. Silicon is used because it is a cheap and abundant semiconductor. Are computer chips made out of sand? | Science Illustrated Are computer chips made out of sand? Posted by siowner on February 18, 2012 in Ask Us , Nanotechnology , Robotics , Technology · 0 Comments The first integrated circuits were developed in Germany in 1949.

Image: Shutterstock The small integrated circuits are usually built out of semiconducting materials such as quartz. Computer chips are made of sand, but not just any kind of sand. Scientifically speaking, the term “sand” is an expression of a certain grain size — 0.063 to 2 mm, to be precise. Computer chips are made of silicon, which is a semiconductor, andm in order to make the most efficient use of it, chip manufacturers use sand that contains as much silicon as possible. The mineral quartz is ideal for this purpose because its two main components are silicon and oxygen. Quartz is a very common mineral, present in many types of rock; and sand often has a high quartz content because it’s mostly pulverised rock. In its pure form, quartz is a colourless mineral, which explains why many non-tropical beaches have white sand, but ordinary beach sand is unfit for the manufacturing of computer chips. The process requires sand with a very high quartz content from a rock called quartzite, which is made of 99 per cent pure quartz.

These types of rocks are formed from sand that was squeezed together over time and heated deep in the Earth, so that almost all other elements have disappeared from the rock. Sand has a high concentration of quartz. Image: Shutterstock You may also like… Silicon or Silicone: What's the Difference? Silicon or Silicone: What's the Difference? By Joseph Castro, Live Science Contributor | June 20, 2013 11:47am ET MORE It may come as a surprise, but silicon and silicone are two very different things. In short, silicon is a naturally occurring chemical element, whereas silicone is a synthetic substance. Silicon is the 14th element on the periodic table. It's a metalloid, meaning it has properties of both metals and nonmetals, and is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, after oxygen. Silicon readily bonds with oxygen and is rarely found in nature in its pure form. You've likely seen silicon as silicon dioxide or silica, better known as quartz, which is the most common component of sand . Silica also comes in other mineral forms, such as flint, jasper and opal.

When silicon and oxygen mix with reactive metals, the result is a class of minerals called silicates, which includes granite, feldspar and mica. Silicon has many industrial uses : As silica, silicon is a key ingredient in bricks, concrete and glass. In its silicate form, the element is used to make enamels, pottery and ceramics. Elemental silicon is a major player in modern electronics because it's an ideal semiconductor of electricity. When heated into a molten state, silicon can be formed into semi-conductive wafers, to serve as the base for integrated circuits (microchips). In fact, Silicon Valley, the southern region of the San Francisco Bay Area, earned its name due to the high concentration of computer and electronics companies in the area producing silicon-based semiconductors and chips. Silicone, by contrast, is a synthetic polymer made up of silicon, oxygen and other elements, most typically carbon and hydrogen. Silicone is generally a liquid or a flexible, rubberlike plastic, and has a number of useful properties, such as low toxicity and high heat resistance. It also provides good electrical insulation.

In the medical field, silicone can be found in implants , catheters, contact lenses, bandages and a variety of other things. You can also find silicone in a number of personal care items, including shampoos, shaving cream, personal lubricants and sex toys . Due to its high heat resistance, silicone makes up a lot of kitchenware, such as oven mitts, tongs and pan handles; silicone's non-stick properties also make it useful for cookware coatings. Additionally, the material's heat resistance and slipperiness make it an ideal lubricant for automotive parts (as a lubricating spray or grease). In other industries, silicone is commonly used as a sealant for watertight containers (e.g., aquariums) and plumbing pipes. And, like silicon, silicone is important in electronics — it's used to make casings that can shield sensitive devices from electrical shocks and other hazards. Making Microchips | Computerworld Making Microchips Computerworld | Jul 8, 2002 1:00 AM PT Email a friend Use commas to separate multiple email addresses From Your message has been sent. Sorry There was an error emailing this page.

More like this Mingis on Tech: From superfast SSDs to Bluetooth locks and solar shingles There are few things in the world as simple as sand, and perhaps none as complex as computer chips. Yet the simple element silicon in sand is the starting point for making the integrated circuits that power everything today, from supercomputers to cell phones to microwave ovens. Turning sand into tiny devices with millions of components is an extraordinary feat of science and engineering that would have seemed impossible when the transistor was invented at Bell Labs in 1947. More QuickStudies Silicon is a natural semiconductor. Under some conditions, it conducts electricity; under others, it acts as an insulator. Silicon's electrical properties can be altered by the addition of impurities, a process called doping. These characteristics make it an ideal material for making transistors, which are simple devices that amplify electrical signals. Transistors can also act as switches - on/off devices used in combination to represent the Boolean operators "and," "or" and "not." Several types of microchips are made today. Microprocessors are logic chips that perform the computations inside most commercial computers. Memory chips store information.

Digital signal processors convert between analog and digital signals (QuickLink: a2270 ). Application-specific integrated circuits are special-purpose chips used in things such as cars and appliances. The Process Chips are made in multibillion-dollar fabrication plants called fabs. Fabs melt and refine sand to produce 99.9999% pure single-crystal silicon ingots. Saws slice the ingots into wafers about as thick as a dime and several inches in diameter. The wafers are cleaned and polished, and each one is used to build multiple chips. These and subsequent steps are done in a "clean room" environment, where extensive precautions are taken to prevent contamination by dust and other foreign substances. A nonconducting layer of silicon dioxide is grown or deposited on the surface of the silicon wafer, and that layer is covered with a photosensitive chemical called a photoresist. The photoresist is exposed to ultraviolet light shined through a patterned plate, or "mask," which hardens the areas exposed to the light. Unexposed areas are then etched away by hot gasses to reveal the silicon dioxide base below. The base and the silicon layer below are further etched to varying depths.

The photoresist hardened by this process of photolithography is then stripped away, leaving a 3-D landscape on the chip that replicates the circuit design embodied in the mask. The electrical conductivity of certain parts of the chip can also be altered by doping them with chemicals under heat and pressure. Photolithography using different masks, followed by more etching and doping, can be repeated hundreds of times for the same chip, producing a more complex integrated circuit at each step. To create conducting paths between the components etched into the chip, the entire chip is overlaid with a thin layer of metal - usually aluminum - and the lithography and etching process is used again to remove all but the thin conducting pathways. Sometimes several layers of conductors, separated by glass insulators, are laid down. Each chip on the wafer is tested for correct performance and then separated from other chips on the wafer by a saw. Good chips are placed into the supporting packages that allow them to be plugged into circuit boards, and bad chips are marked and discarded.

The weird and wonderful materials that make up your PC | TechRadar The weird and wonderful materials that make up your PC The weird and wonderful materials that make up your PC We find out what's hidden inside your computer Shares What's on your motherboard? Call us sceptical, but we bet you didn't know 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane is contained within your PC. It's not nearly as well known as silicon, but today's motherboards wouldn't be nearly as reliable without it. This is just the tip of the iceberg - PCs are built from a range of obscure materials, many of which are extremely expensive and difficult to mine or extract. Chances are you wouldn't be able to describe the properties of neodymium, ruthenium or gallium, but they all have a vital part to play in keeping your PC running smoothly. Here we take a whistle stop tour of the PC, component by component, delving into the amazing substances that are used in its manufacture. We'll see something of their unique properties and why they're used, but we'll also investigate the materials themselves to see what they look like and where they come from.

We'll ponder what'll happen when supplies of the rarer elements run dry, investigate whether these chemicals pose a health risk, and reveal little-known and fascinating facts about these most mysterious of materials. Of course, having these facts at your fingertips won't make you any more effective at improving your PC's performance or choosing your next upgrade, but you'll be off to a flying start when you're next asked, in a pub quiz, what links tantalum and niobium. Silicon chips So, silicon chips - and here we could include the processor, memory, GPU and the Southbridge chip - are made of silicon, right? Well silicon is vitally important, but no chip made entirely from silicon would stand a chance of working. To look at a piece of silicon you'd think it was a metal, but if you were to drop it the chances are it would shatter, which isn't what you'd expect from a metal. With properties intermediate between metals and non-metals, silicon is part of a small group of chemical elements known as metalloids or semi-metals. Semi-metallic is also how you'd describe silicon's electrical properties - it will conduct electricity, but not very well.

However, by doping silicon - the technical term for adding a small amount of another element - its conductivity can be vastly improved. This is the key to the operation of the transistor, the basic building block of all electronic circuits. To cut a long story short, doping with boron or arsenic turns the silicon into something called a p-type semiconductor, while doping with phosphorous or gallium creates an n-type semiconductor. The reasons for this are too complex to explain here, but by combining n-type and p-type semiconductor materials you end up with a transistor, and by connecting enough of them together you can create a processor. The transistors are connected using thin copper strips. A complicated chip will need several layers of copper tracks, so layers of insulating material must be used in between to prevent them shorting out. The insulator is silicon dioxide - the same compound that makes up pure white sand. This can be produced easily by oxidising the surface of the silicon wafer as the chips are being manufactured. The exotic mix of chemicals in a processor doesn't end here. Intel and IBM made the headlines a few years ago when they began using an element called hafnium to improve the performance of their chips.

If you've not heard of this obscure element before, then you're in good company. Suffice to say, it's a metal, and its close neighbours in the periodic table are the equally rare elements lutetium, tantalum, and the radioactive material rutherfordium. If you hanker after little-known facts, it's named after Hafnia, which is the Latin name for the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where it was discovered in 1923. Worryingly, because of its use in the control rods of nuclear reactors, some experts have suggested that it will run out within 10 years at current rates of consumption. That's a long time in the world of semiconductors though, and we feel confident that an alternative - perhaps zirconium - will step up to the mark. While the apparent scarcity of hafnium might suggest that it would be expensive, there's another element found in many processors that costs about 50 times more, gram for gram. Gold is only used in very small quantities, but it's used as the plating on the pins or pads of most high-performance processors.

The property that makes it such a good material for jewellery also makes it an excellent metal for plating components: as a fairly unreactive element, it doesn't tarnish due to reaction with the air. This doesn't just affect its appearance - it means that the good electrical contact between the processor and its socket won't diminish over time. If you consider yourself safety-conscious, you may have raised your eyebrows at the mention of one particular element used in semiconductor manufacturing. A hundred and fifty years ago, when the Cornish tin mining industry was in full swing, that element was a by-product of tin production, and was sold to America as a pesticide in the fight against the boll weevil beetle that was devastating the country's cotton crops. The element in question is arsenic, a minor constituent of the tin ore cassiterite, and which was driven off by heat treatment in a calciner and condensed in a chamber called a labyrinth. Given the fact that the young boys who were employed to remove the arsenic from the labyrinth rarely lived beyond their early 20s, you'd be excused for questioning how sensible it is to put it in PCs.

You'll be relieved to hear that only small portions of a silicon chip are doped and, even then, concentrations measured in a few parts per million are all that's needed to provide those all important semiconductor properties. The bottom line is that integrated circuits contain no more than trace amounts of arsenic. Hard disk platters We all know that hard disks store data magnetically, but there are few similarities between them and the old DAT format used in the 1980s. Both use a head to read and write data to magnetic media, but there the similarity ends. Magnetic disks use a much more efficient form of recording than is possible with a flexible tape, although that efficiency comes at a price. While magnetic tape is a simple, cheap strip of plastic film impregnated with iron oxide (rust), or more recently chromium dioxide, the platter of a hard disk drive is manufactured in a much more expensive multi-stage process that demands an extremely high degree of accuracy, and uses some interesting and esoteric materials. The starting point is a plain disk, machined to high tolerances from a non-magnetic material. This way the magnetic properties can be accurately fine-tuned by adding thin layers of other materials.

The disk is typically made from either glass or metal. Aluminium is a good choice since it's light and non-magnetic, but hard disks need to be robust and aluminium isn't hard enough by itself. Instead, the material used is an alloy of aluminium and magnesium, plus small amounts of other elements like silicon, copper and zinc. There are therefore five or more substances in the blank platter, although none of them are exactly rare or unusual - the more esoteric materials are used later. The platter will spin at up to 7,200rpm, and the read/write head will hover millionths of a millimetre above it, so any unevenness would be catastrophic - the head would crash immediately. It isn't possible to polish aluminium alloy to the necessary smoothness, so the blank must be coated in a layer of a substance called NiP, which can take the high polish. This material is an alloy of nickel and phosphorous. An alloy is usually thought of as a mixture of substances that shares their properties, but NiP couldn't be more different from its constituent parts. Phosphorous is a non-metallic element, and a very reactive one at that.

In its white elemental form, it will ignite spontaneously in air and burn fiercely. It's also highly toxic and glows in the dark. However, like nickel, NiP has all the properties of a metal and is relatively inert. Strangely though, whereas nickel is magnetic, NiP is not. Most of the other materials on the platter are responsible for its magnetic properties. Iron is the most familiar magnetic material, but those you'll find in a hard disk are far more interesting. There are many magnetic (or, to be more accurate, ferromagnetic) metals, but those used in a hard drive are chosen for the ways in which they interact. Since a more detailed explanation would take us into the intricacies of physics, we'll stay well clear of the 'why' and concentrate squarely on the 'what'. First there's something called the soft magnetic underlayer, which is made from an alloy of cobalt, nickel and iron. In the highest performance disks, the soft magnetic underlayer is divided into two by a thin layer of the element ruthenium.

Only a very small amount it is needed, which is just as well - as the 74th most abundant element on Earth (and there only are 90 naturally occurring elements), ruthenium is rarer than both gold and platinum. Accounting for one part per billion of the Earth's crust, just 12 tonnes are produced annually, which is only enough to make a one-metre cube. Its name comes from Ruthenia, the 13th century Latin word for the ancient land of Rus, which comprised parts of current day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland. The true recording layer is where we find the really expensive materials though, as we're now looking at an alloy of cobalt, chromium and platinum. Although platinum is more abundant than ruthenium, because it has so many more uses - mostly as a catalyst in the chemical industry and catalytic converters in cars - it's much more expensive. Currently it sells for $1,500 per Troy ounce, which works out as over $48,000 per kilogram.

Hard disk heads Rare and expensive elements aren't only found on the platter, as we'll see when we look at that other important part of a hard disk drive - the read/write head. The head is attached to an arm assembly, which can move to access any of the concentric tracks of data on the platter. An integral part of the arm is a wire coil that moves in a magnetic field whenever an electrical current is applied. That magnetic field is provided by a very powerful magnet, of which a major constituent is neodymium. Neodymium looks much the same as any other metal, but it's unique in being the most magnetic of all the elements. In its raw form that property isn't particularly useful, since neodymium has such a low curie point - the temperature above which magnetism is lost - that anything containing a neodymium magnet would have to be refrigerated. This is where those other metals come in. By mixing two parts of neodymium with 14 parts of iron and one part of boron, a combination of strong magnetism and a high curie point is achieved.

And we really are talking about strong magnets - a neodymium-iron-boron magnet can lift over a thousand times it own weight. This has given rise to safety concerns - if you ever try dismantling an old hard drive, make sure your fingers are well out of the way if the pair of neodymium magnets find themselves drawn together. That's not all - although neodymium, iron and boron are all malleable, the alloy used in magnets is brittle, so if you do allow a pair of neodymium magnets to snap together from any distance, watch out for flying shards of alloy. 1 What Are Computer Chips Made Out Of? [Technology Explained] What Are Computer Chips Made Out Of? [Technology Explained] Email Advertisement If you’ve ever wondered, “What are computer chips made out of?” – That’s a tougher question than one might think. A computer chip is any small electronic device that contains an integrated circuit (IC). What that means is if you look at an ordinary electronic circuit, like the copper lines on the green boards in a radio, that circuit gets miniturized and integrated into a ‘chip’.

So that’s not limited to Central Processing Units (CPU) but can include any other transistorized device in the computer. Why do I say transistor? Well, a transistor is the electronic component responsible for the computing part of an IC. Think of the transistor as a switch. If the electronic conditions are right, the switch may be on. If the conditions are not right, the switch may be off. On might represent true, and off might represent false. On might represent the binary number 1 and off might represent the binary number 0. Carrying the switch metaphor a bit further, a lightbulb that is on represents a well lit room. That’s information. One small piece of information. If you want to make decision with LOTS of information, you’re going to need LOTS of transistors. Have you seen a transistor? They’re pretty big compared to what’s on an IC. Just for reference, here’s a picture of what the very first transistor looked like. Advertisement That transistor can only answer one little question at one time – Yes or No? True or False? On or Off? How many decisions are needed to run the programs that we use on computers these days, second by second? Millions? Billions?

Honestly I don’t know. But what I can tell is that in a space roughly one inch by one inch square, Intel has crammed 731 million transistors on the i7 Processor Extreme Edition . That is supposed to be the latest and greatest processor for a desktop computer right now. As you can imagine, it would be really hard to cram in all the copper and solder that you see in the old time transistor above. So, new materials were needed. Enter the semiconductor material. You’ve heard of silicon right? It’s a semiconductor. What’s a semiconductor you ask? Good question. You know how copper is a conductor of electricity right? And rubber or glass are considered insulators of electricity, meaning they don’t pass electricity, right? Well, a semiconductor sort-of passes electricity under the right conditions . Think of it like a pinched-off hose. If there is enough pressure, or electromotive force (EMF), the water, or electricity, will flow. You can see now how important silicon is in the construction of these circuits. There are other semiconductor materials out there, but we have silicon in such abundance that it’s the most economical material to use. That’s a silicon wafer, highly polished below.

Whew, clear as mud? Now, take that main part of the CPU, called a die, and think of over 700 million transistors on it. Do you see 700 million little sockets where you put your CPU in? No. There are 1,366 pins on the bottom of the CPU. There is a bunch of small electronics in the die and the CPU combining those 700 million transistors down to just 1,366 pins. I like to try to visualize it by thinking of all the roads and streets in a country leading down to just a few thousand major highways. So, the short answer to the question of, ” What are computer chips are made of?” is lots of transistors, a little bit of superconductive silicon and some mind-numbingly incredible engineering. Seriously, after almost 20 years with computers and other integrated circuits, I still have a hard time fathoming what a miracle it is. Take a look at the drawing just for the package that the die goes into. Hopefully this article has helped you understand what a computer chip is made of. If it has, please let me know in the comments. I’m fragile and need validation.

If it hasn’t, well, let me know too, so I can try to clarify anything. I’ll only cry a little. ;) How integrated circuit is made - material, making, used, processing, components, dimensions, composition, industry Integrated Circuit Background An integrated circuit, commonly referred to as an IC, is a microscopic array of electronic circuits and components that has been diffused or implanted onto the surface of a single crystal, or chip, of semiconducting material such as silicon. It is called an integrated circuit because the components, circuits, and base material are all made together, or integrated, out of a single piece of silicon, as opposed to a discrete circuit in which the components are made separately from different materials and assembled later. ICs range in complexity from simple logic modules and amplifiers to complete microcomputers containing millions of elements. The impact of integrated circuits on our lives has been enormous. ICs have become the principal components of almost all electronic devices. These miniature circuits have demonstrated low cost, high reliability, low power requirements, and high processing speeds compared to the vacuum tubes and transistors which preceded them.

Integrated circuit microcomputers are now used as controllers in equipment such as machine tools, vehicle operating systems, and other applications where hydraulic, pneumatic, or mechanical controls were previously used. Because IC microcomputers are smaller and more versatile than previous control mechanisms, they allow the equipment to respond to a wider range of input and produce a wider range of output. They can also be reprogrammed without having to redesign the control circuitry. Integrated circuit microcomputers are so inexpensive they are even found in children's electronic toys. The first integrated circuits were created in the late 1950s in response to a demand from the military for miniaturized electronics to be used in missile control systems. At the time, transistors and printed circuit boards were the state-of-the-art electronic technology. Although transistors made many new electronic applications possible, engineers were still unable to make a small enough package for the large number of components and circuits required in complex devices like sophisticated control systems and handheld programmable calculators. Several companies were in competition to produce a breakthrough in miniaturized electronics, and their development efforts were so close that there is some question as to which company actually produced the first IC.

In fact, when the integrated circuit was finally patented in 1959, the patent was awarded jointly to two individuals working separately at two different companies. After the invention of the IC in 1959, the number of components and circuits that could be incorporated into a single chip doubled every year for several years. The first integrated circuits contained only up to a dozen components. The process that produced these early ICs was known as small scale integration, or SSI. By the mid-1960s, medium scale integration, MSI, produced ICs with hundreds of components. This was followed by large scale integration techniques, or LSI, which produced ICs with thousands of components and made the first microcomputers possible. The first microcomputer chip, often called a microprocessor, was developed by Intel Corporation in 1969. It went into commercial production in 1971 as the Intel 4004. Intel introduced their 8088 chip in 1979, followed by the Intel 80286, 80386, and 80486.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the designations 286, 386, and 486 were well known to computer users as reflecting increasing levels of computing power and speed. Intel's Pentium chip is the latest in this series and reflects an even higher level. How Integrated Circuit Components Are Formed In an integrated circuit, electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors are formed directly onto the surface of a silicon crystal. The process of manufacturing an integrated circuit will make more sense if one first understands some of the basics of how these components are formed. Even before the first IC was developed, it was known that common electronic components could be made from silicon. The question was how to make them, and the connecting circuits, from the same piece of silicon? The solution was to alter, or dope, the chemical composition of tiny areas on the silicon crystal surface by adding other chemicals, called dopants. Some dopants bond with the silicon to produce regions where the dopant atoms have one electron they can give up. These are called N regions.

Other dopants bond with the silicon to produce regions where the dopant atoms have room to take one electron. These are called P regions. When a P region touches an N region, the boundary between them is referred to as a PN junction. This boundary is only 0.000004 inches (0.0001 cm) wide, but is crucial to the operation of integrated circuit components. Within a PN junction, the atoms of the two regions bond in such a manner as to create a third region, called a depletion region, in which the P dopant atoms capture all the N dopant extra electrons, thus depleting them. One of the phenomena that results is that a positive voltage applied to the P region can cause an electrical current to flow through the junction into the N region, but a similar positive voltage applied to the N region will result in little or no current flowing through the junction back into the P region. This ability of a PN junction to either conduct or insulate depending on which side the voltage is applied can be used to form integrated circuit components that direct and control current flows in the same manner as diodes and transistors. A diode, for example, is simply a single PN junction.

By altering the amount and types of dopants and changing the shapes and relative placements of P and N regions, integrated circuit components that emulate the functions of resistors and capacitors can be also be formed. Design Some integrated circuits can be considered standard, off-the-shelf items. Once designed, there is no further design work required. Examples of standard ICs would include voltage regulators, amplifiers, analog switches, and analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog converters. These ICs are usually sold to other companies who incorporate them into printed circuit boards for various electronic products. Other integrated circuits are unique and require extensive design work. An example would be a new microprocessor for computers. This design work may require research and development of new materials and new manufacturing techniques to achieve the final design. Raw Materials Pure silicon is the basis for most integrated circuits. It provides the base, or substrate for the entire chip and is chemically doped to provide the N and P regions that make up the integrated circuit components. The silicon must be so pure that only one out of every ten billion atoms can be an impurity. This would be the equivalent of one grain of sugar in ten buckets of sand.

Silicon dioxide is used as an insulator and as a dielectric material in IC capacitors. Typical N-type dopants include phosphorus and arsenic. Boron and gallium are typical P-type dopants. Aluminum is commonly used as a connector between the various IC components. The thin wire leads from the integrated circuit chip to its mounting package may be aluminum or gold. The mounting package itself may be made from ceramic or plastic materials. The Manufacturing Process Hundreds of integrated circuits are made at the same time on a single, thin slice of silicon and are then cut apart into individual IC chips. The manufacturing process takes place in a tightly controlled environment known as a clean room where the air is filtered to remove foreign particles. The few equipment operators in the room wear lint-free garments, gloves, and coverings for their heads and feet. Since some IC components are sensitive to certain frequencies of light, even the light sources are filtered. Although manufacturing processes may vary depending on the integrated circuit being made, the following process is typical.

Preparing the silicon wafer 1 A cylindrical ingot of silicon about 1.5 to 4.0 inches (3.8 to 10.2 cm) in diameter is held vertically inside a vacuum chamber with a high-temperature heating coil encircling it. Starting at the top of the cylinder, the silicon is heated to its melting point of about 2550°F (1400°C). To avoid contamination, the heated region is contained only by the surface tension of the molten silicon. As the region melts, any impurities in the silicon become mobile. The heating coil is slowly moved down the length of the cylinder, and the impurities are carried along with the melted region. When the heating coil reaches the bottom, almost all of the impurities have been swept along and are concentrated there. The bottom is then sliced off, leaving a cylindrical ingot of purified silicon. 2 A thin, round wafer of silicon is cut off the ingot using a precise cutting machine called a wafer slicer. Each slice is about 0.01 to 0.025 inches (0.004 to 0.01 cm) thick.

The surface on which the integrated circuits are to be formed is polished. 3 The surfaces of the wafer are coated with a layer of silicon dioxide to form an insulating base and to prevent any oxidation of the silicon which would cause impurities. The silicon dioxide is formed by subjecting the wafer to superheated steam at about 1830°F (1000°C) under several atmospheres of pressure to allow the oxygen in the water vapor to react with the silicon. Controlling the temperature and length of exposure controls the thickness of the silicon dioxide layer. Masking 4 The complex and interconnected design of the circuits and components is prepared in a process similar to that used to make printed circuit boards. For ICs, however, the dimensions are much smaller and there are many layers superimposed on top of each other. The design of each layer is prepared on a computer-aided drafting machine, and the image is made into a mask which will be optically reduced and transferred to the surface of the wafer. The mask is opaque in certain areas and clear in others. It has the images for all of the several hundred integrated circuits to be formed on the wafer.

5 A drop of photoresist material is placed in the center of the silicon wafer, and the wafer is spun rapidly to distribute the photoresist over the entire surface. The photoresist is then baked to remove the solvent. 6 The coated wafer is then placed under the first layer mask and irradiated with light. Because the spaces between circuits and components are so small, ultraviolet light with a very short wavelength is used to squeeze through the tiny clear areas on the mask. Beams of electrons or x-rays are also sometimes used to irradiate the photoresist. 7 The mask is removed and portions of the photoresist are dissolved. If a positive photoresist was used, then the areas that were irradiated will be dissolved. If a negative photoresist was used, then the areas that were irradiated will remain. The uncovered areas are then either chemically etched to open up a layer or are subjected to chemical doping to create a layer of P or N regions. Doping — Atomic diffusion 8 One method of adding dopants to create a layer of P or N regions is atomic diffusion. In this method a batch of wafers is placed in an oven made of a quartz tube surrounded by a heating element.

The wafers are heated to an operating temperature of about 1500-2200°F (816-1205°C), and the dopant chemical is carried in on an inert gas. As the dopant and gas pass over the wafers, the dopant is deposited on the hot surfaces left exposed by the masking process. This method is good for doping relatively large areas, but is not accurate for smaller areas. There are also some problems with the repeated use of high temperatures as successive layers are added. Doping — lon implantation 9 The second method to add dopants is ion implantation. In this method a dopant gas, like phosphine or boron trichloride, is ionized to provide a beam of high-energy dopant ions which are fired at specific regions of the wafer. The ions penetrate the wafer and remain implanted. The depth of penetration can be controlled by altering the beam energy, and the amount of dopant can be controlled by altering the beam current and time of exposure. Schematically, the whole process resembles firing a beam in a bent cathode-ray tube.

This method is so precise, it does not require masking—it just points and shoots the dopant where it is needed. However it is much slower than the atomic diffusion process. Making successive layers 10 The process of masking and etching or doping is repeated for each successive layer depending on the doping process used until all of the integrated circuit chips are complete. Sometimes a layer of silicon dioxide is laid down to provide an insulator between layers or components. This is done through a process known as chemical vapor deposition, in which the wafer's surface is heated to about 752°F (400°C), and a reaction between the gases silane and oxygen deposits a layer of silicon dioxide. A final silicon dioxide layer seals the surface, a final etching opens up contact points, and a layer of aluminum is deposited to make the contact pads. At this point, the individual ICs are tested for electrical function. Making individual ICs 11 The thin wafer is like a piece of glass. The hundreds of individual chips are separated by scoring a crosshatch of lines with a fine diamond cutter and then putting the wafer under stress to cause each chip to separate. Those ICs that failed the electrical test are discarded.

Inspection under a microscope reveals other ICs that were damaged by the separation process, and these are also discarded. 12 The good ICs are individually bonded into their mounting package and the thin wire leads are connected by either ultrasonic bonding or thermocompression. The mounting package is marked with identifying part numbers and other information. 13 The completed integrated circuits are sealed in anti-static plastic bags to be stored or shipped to the end user. Quality Control Despite the controlled environment and use of precision tools, a high number of integrated circuit chips are rejected. Although the percentage of reject chips has steadily dropped over the years, the task of making an interwoven lattice of microscopic circuits and components is still difficult, and a certain amount of rejects are inevitable. Hazardous Materials and Recycling The dopants gallium and arsenic, among others, are toxic substances and their storage, use, and disposal must be tightly controlled. Because integrated circuit chips are so versatile, a significant recycling industry has sprung up. Many ICs and other electronic components are removed from otherwise obsolete equipment, tested, and resold for use in other devices. The Future It is difficult to tell with any certainty what the future holds for the integrated circuit.

Changes in technology since the device's invention have been rapid, but evolutionary. Many changes have been made in the architecture, or circuit layout, on a chip, but the integrated circuit still remains a silicon-based design. The next major leap in the advancement of electronic devices, if such a leap is to come, may involve an entirely new circuit technology. Better devices than the very best microprocessor have always been known to be possible. The human brain, for example, processes information much more efficiently than any computer, and some futurists have speculated that the next generation of processor circuits will be biological, rather than mineral. At this point, such matters are the stuff of fiction. There are no immediate signs that the integrated circuit is in any danger of extinction. Where To Learn More Facts About Silicon Facts About Silicon By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | September 16, 2014 11:41am ET MORE Silicon is the 14th element on the Periodic Table. Credit: Andrei Marincas | Shutterstock Silicon is the element to thank for the computer you're using to read these words.

A crucial component in microelectronics and computer chips, this extremely common element is also responsible for warm, white beaches — silica, an oxide of silicon, is the most common component of sand . Silicon is the seventh-most abundant element in the universe and the second-most abundant element on the planet, after oxygen, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry . About 25 percent of the Earth's crust is silicon; weirder spots where this element appears include menstrual cups, breast implants and oven mitts. What makes silicon so special that is has an entire valley in California named after it? Read on.

Just the Facts Atomic Symbol (on the Periodic Table of Elements ): Si Atomic Weight (average mass of the atom): 28.09 Density: 2.3296 grams per cubic centimeter Phase at Room Temperature: Soild Melting Point: 2577 degrees Fahrenheit (1414 degrees Celsius) Boiling Point: 5909 degrees F (3265 degrees C) Number of isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons): 24 Most common isotopes: Si-28 (92 percent natural abundance) Silicon the semiconductor In nature, silicon is no loner. It's usually found linked up with a pair of oxygen molecules as silicon dioxide, otherwise known as silica. Quartz, an abundant ingredient in sand, is made up of non-crystallized silica. Crystalline silicon Credit: Only Fabrizio Shutterstock Silicon is neither metal nor non-metal; it's a metalloid, an element that falls somewhere between the two. The category of metalloid is something of a gray area, with no firm definition of what fits the bill, but metalloids generally have properties of both metals and non-metals.

They look metallic, but conduct electricity only intermediately well. Silicon is a semiconductor, meaning that it does conduct electricity. Unlike a typical metal, however, silicon gets better at conducting electricity as the temperature increases (metals get worse at conductivity at higher temperatures). Silicon was first isolated in 1824 by Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who also discovered cerium, selenium and thorium, according to the Chemical Heritage Foundation . Berzelius heated silica with potassium to purify silicon, according to the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility , but today the refinement process heats carbon with silica in the form of sand to isolate the element. Silicon is a main ingredient in very low-tech creations, including bricks and ceramics. But the high-tech stuff is where the element really makes its mark. As a semiconductor, silicon is used to make transistors, which amplify or switch electrical currents and are the backbone of electronics from radios to iPhones. Silicon is used in various ways in solar cells and computer chips, with one example being a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor, or MOSFET, the basic switch in many electronics.

To make silicon into a transistor, the crystalline form of the element is adulterated with trace amounts of other elements, such as boron or phosphorous, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . The trace elements bond with the silicon atoms, freeing up electrons to move throughout the material, according to the University of Virginia . By creating spaces of unadulterated silicon, engineers can create a gap where these electrons can't flow — like a switch in the "off" position. To turn the switch to "on," a metal plate, connected to a power source, is placed near the crystal. When the electricity flows, the plate becomes positively charged. Electrons, which are negatively charged, are drawn to the positive charge, allowing them to make the leap across the pure-silicon segment. (Other semiconductors besides silicon can be used in transistors, as well.) Who knew? When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, they left behind a white pouch containing a silicon disc slightly bigger than a silver dollar . Inscribed in microscopic font on the disc are 73 messages, each from a different country, expressing wishes of goodwill and peace.

Silicon isn't the same thing as silicone , that famous polymer found in breast implants, menstrual cups and other medical technology. Silicone is made of silicon along with oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. Because it resists heat so well, silicone has increasingly been used to make kitchen tools, such as oven mitts and baking sheets. Silicon can be dangerous. When inhaled over long periods of time, it can cause a lung disease known as silicosis. Love the iridescence of an opal? Thank silicon. The gemstone is a form of silica bound with water molecules. Plants use silicon to strengthen their cell walls. The element appears to be an important nutrient that helps confer resistance to disease, according to a 1994 paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Silicon Valley gets its name from the silicon used in computer chips. The nickname first appeared in 1971 in the newspaper "Electronic News." Current research Today's silicon research sounds just short of sci-fi: In 2006, researchers announced they had created a computer chip that melded silicon components with brain cells . Electrical signals from the brain cells could be transmitted to the electronic silicon components of the chip, and vice versa.

The hope is to eventually create electronic devices to treat neurological disorders. Silicon also has promise in the creation of incredibly tiny lasers called nanoneedles, which can be used to transmit data faster and more efficiently than traditional optical cables. Superconductor lasers shed heat much easier than glass lasers, said John Badding, a materials chemist at Penn State University. That means they can boast more power than traditional lasers. Badding and his team are also working to create next-generation optical fibers that integrate superconductors instead of simply glass, he told Live Science. "Semiconductors have a whole variety of properties that you just can't get with glasses," Badding said. Having semiconductor materials embedded in optical fibers would allow for mini-electronics included in these cables, which are crucial for sending information over long distances. Semiconductor cables would also allow for the manipulation of light in the fiber, Badding added. Traditional silicon chips are made by depositing layers of the element on a flat surface, usually starting with a precursor gas such as silane (SiH4) and allowing the gas to solidify, Badding said. Cables, on the other hand, are drawn.

To make a glass fiber optic cable, you would begin with a glass rod, heat it and then draw it out like taffy, lengthening it into a long, skinny thread. Badding and his colleagues have figured out a way to get semiconductors into this spaghetti-like shape. They use drawn-glass fibers with tiny holes and then compress gases such as silane under high pressures to force them into those spaces. "It'd be like filling a garden hose that goes from Penn State to New York completely solid with silicon," Badding said. "You'd think things would get plugged up and messed up, but they don't." The resulting semiconductor strands are three to four times thinner than a human hair. Badding and his team are also experimenting with other semiconductors, such as zinc selenide (zinc and selenium) to create fibers with capacities never seen before. More About Silicon: For a fun and interesting look at the history of Silicon Valley, including information about the minds and products involved in the making of the high-tech startups, check out NPR's interactive Silicon Valley timeline . They may be close on the Periodic Table of Elements but silicon and carbon are different chemical beasts.

Here's a look by Dow Corning on their differences , which boil down to one being organic and the other inorganic. HowStuffWorks has a great breakdown of how semiconductors work and how silicon is a major player. Want to find out how the famous Intel chips, made of silicon of course, are made? The tech company describes the history of their chips , how they've changed over time, how they're made and how they work.

Question: What element are computer chips typically made from?
Answer: Silicon