(in progress) "the spice must flow"

24 May 2024 See all posts

“I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze! Give me spice!” - Dune

Good monopolies, the great houses:

• CVD and PVD (deposition): Applied Material top. KLA and Tokyo Electron some.
• Photo resists coating: Tokyo Electron - 90% market share.
• Photolithography: ASML. Also, Nikon, Canon, and SMEE.
• Dry etch - reactive ion etching: Applied Materials, KLA, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron.
• Top assembly and test houses → ASE, Amkor, Siliconware Precision, and STATS-Chipac

On the spice harvestors

• Wafer fab equipment, etchers, deposition, lithography, testers, packaging
• EU​V lithography
• Ion implanter machine (for doping)
• Wafer washing machine
• Ion diffusion furnace (doping, but diffusion isn’t used anymore)
• Thermal oxidation furnace (deposition)
• Endura Volta Selective (CVD deposition)
• Centura Ultima HDP CVD (CVD deposition)
• JEOL E-beam direct write system for masks (photo masks)
• Photo resist (spin) coating machines
• Photo resist stripping machine (resist stripping after the pattern has been etched)
• Sonora ASM wafer heating machine
• Czochralski crystal growing systems - growing silicon wafers

Harvesting (the process flow):

• Wafer:
• Each step is either adding, modifying, heating, cleaning, or removing the layers on the wafers.
• Add thin layer of something
• Use lithography to transfer a pattern from a mask onto the layer
• Etching the pattern
• Doping
• Adding thin layer again

• Deposition: Depositing thin layers onto wafers. Oxides, polysilicons, metal conductors, dielectric insulators.
• Thermal oxidation: Used for growing silicon oxide layers onto the wafers artificially. A thin layer grows automatically.
• Epitaxy: For depositing epitaxial layers of pure silicon on the wafers. Normal wafers still have oxygen and carbon impurities. Everything sits on top of this epitaxial layer.
• Physical Vapour Deposition: For depositing thin metal layers. In a vacuum chamber, with wafers on the top, metals are heated from above. Metal vaporizes and gets deposited on the wafer.
• Irving’s PVD technique of argon ions.
• Chemical Vapour Deposition: Also used to deposit epitaxial layers of silicon.
• Atomic Layer Deposition.

• Photo Masks:
  • Materials: Quartz, lime soda glass.
  • Machine: JEOL E-beam direct write system for masks (photo masks).
  • Photo Resists: Like film, which reacts with light when exposed and leaves an imprint.
  • Etching:
    • Wet etching
    • Dry etching / Plasma etch / plasma assisted etching
    • Reactive ion etching

• Spice Origin:
  • Czochralski process