HOW IT'S MADE: Microchips

HOW IT'S MADE Microchips

Microchips are everywhere! With the advent of amazing technology comes a greater need for efficient microchips. But they sound minuscule, so if you’re wondering about how they are made, we’ll discuss that in our video!

Welcome back to How It’s Made, folks, and today we’ll be talking all about microchips! But before we delve into the world of manufacturing, hit that subscribe button, if you haven’t already!

What is a microchip?
Microchips are a flat silicon disk that has an integrated circuit embedded on it and even incorporates transistors. There are patterns of tiny switches that are created on the silicon wafer by embedding materials to form a deep and integrated lattice of interconnected shapes. There are elaborate processes that lead to the construction of these interconnected circuits, and we’ll discuss all of them in detail.

Raw Material: Silicon

Silicon is the digital gold in the technology industry as it is a widely used semiconductor. The manufacturers often improve the properties of the semiconductor by adding phosphorus or boron. The great news is silicon is made from sand which is the second most popularly found element after oxygen.

Silica sand is a form of silicon dioxide from which silicon wafers are made. The first step for this is by melting the sand into a shape of a large cylinder called an ingot from where the thin wafers are sliced off.

For microchips, good and pure silicon is always a mandatory material hence, only one impurity atom, for every 10 million silicon atoms is allowed. Silicon bulls are made in a range of different diameters where the most common sizes are 150, 200, and 300 millimeters wafers! Now, for microchips, the silicon wafers must be really thin. Hence, there is a special sawing technique where these wafers are made.

Why is silicon used?
Silicon is a semiconductor that is an efficient conductor of electricity provided certain conditions are fulfilled. Every silicon atom has four outermost electrons because of which actual pure monocrystalline silicon is non-conductive at room temperature. To make it conductive, small quantities of specific atoms are to be added as impurities to the wafer.

This process is called doping and most often, boron and phosphorus atoms are highly used. The most suitable elements in these groups are very close to silicon on the periodic table and thus have very similar properties.

The P and N conductive layers are very important and the most important part of the chip is the transistors that are built on the P and N conductive layers. The wafer transistors are the smallest control units in microchips. Their job is to control electric voltages and currents.

They are by far the most important components of electronic circuits as every transistor on a chip contains P and N conductive layers. These layers are made of silicon crystals and they also have an additional layer of silicon oxide which acts as an insulator. A layer of electrically conductive polysilicon is coated on top of this.

How are microchips made?

Step #1. Layout and Design
Microchips have to always be carefully designed as these are highly complex chips that are made up of billions of integrated and connected transistors that make up complex circuits such as microcontrollers and crypto chips.

A few square millimeters have to be measured in size and carefully outlined. The actual number of microcomponents requires an in-depth design process that defines the chip’s functions. This actually characterizes the chips’ technical and physical properties.

In fact, special design tools are used to draw up the plans for integrated circuits and construct a three-dimensional architecture of sandwich layers. This blueprint is transferred to photomasks to give the geometric images of the circuits.

The photomasks are used as image templates during the subsequent chip fabrication process to make sure that the microscopic structures of a chip are reproduced perfectly. These are the patterns you’d be seeing on the microchip.

They have to be made in a dust-free environment with stable temperature and humidity levels.

Step #2. Putting it together in a cleanroom.

The chips have to be made in a cleanroom where no more than one particle of dust larger than 0.5 micrometers is allowed in around 10 liters of air. This place is extremely sophisticated with several million cubic meters of air being circulated every hour and hundreds of air volume regulators maintaining a constant airflow. The employees in these production areas have an extremely strict dress code.

It is here that all the airlock chips are built on a base wafer that is cut from a silicon ingot, depending on their size. Several dozen or several thousand chips can be made on one wafer because of their small size.

#Howitsmade #microchips #howitsdone

[dwagincon]

This is not the "how it's made" I'm used to

[jessedominguez]

I’ve always wondered how these things were made and after watching this video I still have no clue

[davidbiondo]

I appreciate educational videos, I just want to try and provide a bit of constructive feedback. I can’t quite pinpoint what the issue is it may be the speed and tone at which you’re talking, or the way you presented the information I’m not quite sure it just doesn’t seem as easy to understand as some other educational channels. That being said keep up the good work and thank you for taking the time to do the research.

[Misterfloflomovievideo]

I feel like you are just reading wikipedia at this point. And reading fast!

[Constantinus]

For anyone wondering how those tiny transistors can be placed by the billions on such a small area: they aren't. The factory uses lenses.

You have seen a projector they use in meetings or schools to show PowerPoint presentations, or movies, right? The big image on the wall comes out from that small projector, because the image is magnified with a lens.
Imagine that it's a different type of lens, which shrinks the image, instead of magnifying it. You project the image on the wall, but now the image is so small, you can't see it.

Put a slice of bread on the kitchen table. Spread thick blueberry jelly on it, generously. Let it dry for a while.
Take a tennis racket. Fill some holes in the net. Hold the tennis racket above the table, above the slice of bread.
Put a lamp above the tennis racket.
The light shines through the holes (not the plugged ones), onto the table and bread below. It will create an image of light spots and dark spots, on the table.
Now put a shrinking lens, as wide as the tennis racket, between the tennis racket and the slice of bread. Move it until It shrinks the spotty image exactly onto the blueberry-spread slice of bread.
The blueberry jelly is not light sensitive, but if it would be, it would soften where the light spots hit from above, and would remain hard, where the dark spots are.
Wash the slice of bread with Coca-Cola. The softened jelly will wash away, the hard jelly will stay. Now you have a spotty slice of bread, it has blueberry jelly only where the holes were plugged in the tennis racket and the light didn't shine through.

Take a different tennis racket, plug other holes in it.
Spread peanut butter on the bread, on top of the dry bread and jelly spots.
Repeat the lamp-lens-washing process.

Now you have a layered bread/jelly/peanut butter masterpiece. Some parts have three layers, some only bread and jelly (where the peanut butter washed away), some only bread and peanut butter (where the jelly washed away), some with only bread (where both tennis rackets had holes, so the light went through, so the jelly and the peanut butter softened and was washed away, in the respective steps of the process).
You just need to plan beforehand, which holes to plug in those tennis rackets, so you can build your islands of jelly and/or peanut butter, where you want them on your slice of bread.

And that, my friends, is how transistors in integrated circuits are built, layer by layer. If you use various materials instead of jelly or peanut butter, and pretty much replace the whole installation with specialized equipment and materials, and really, really good lenses, you have an integrated circuit manufacturing kitchen. I mean fabrication plant. Fab. Factory.

The components are not placed on the silicon, they are spread (well...) as a layer of homogeneous material, then illuminated (well...) in specific points, then washed away (well...), then spread a different material, illuminate in a different set of specific points, washed, and repeat this several times, with several materials and several photomasks. Which are essentially sieves, not carnival masks.

The transistors are not placed, they are built all together (well...), on the silicon disc itself. And thanks to the lens, they can be smaller than we can hold, because we never hold them, we build them on their silicon disc, right there, layer by layer. Theoretically, we don't even need to see them, even with a microscope, because we see the big mask above with the holes we made in it, but we shrink the circuit's image using lenses (well...) and that's what gets made. We still need to see them though, with microscopes, because we need to see if they were made ok.

[martf]

My mind still can't accept the fact that we can build things at those scales.
The size of these things is unimaginably small.

[steelfalconx]

Hey bring back the guy that actually explains things!

[dylanmissuwe]

This has to be satire. Right? RIGHT?? This dude is literally reading of Wikipedia out if context and adding random untrue crap in between it

[MrGiova-epkj]

Incredible! Now I have absolutely no idea of how microchips are made.

[Noviomagus]

I did this work for 15 years when i was younger. That was one of my most relaxed jobs i ever had.
First time i walked in there, it was like walking 100years into the future.

[TiktokVibes]

I missed the part how microchips are made

[PhdHung]

I don't know what's more impressive - the microchip, or the machine that made the microchip

[pollyaloy]

After watching this I still don’t know how silicon chips are made 🤔

[edwardhoulton]

This is amazing, you have said virtually nothing.

[jacobmcmahon]

I worked in Intel's cleanroom for three years in Phoenix. My entire team's job was the maintenance and upgrade of a line of 6 million dollar machines. There were 25 of them and their sole job was the scan wafers after processes to make sure other machines weren't adding particles or "defects" to any of the product. I say this as a small insight to how big these facilities are. By the time I left the new clean room was done being built and I could walk straight inside of only clean room for 2 miles.

[antipastamony]

I can't not talk about the fact that the logo used in the thumbnail is literally just the macOS icon for system preferences. I assume the creator looked up gear-based logos on google images or something and didn't realize what it came from as otherwise it just seems like too bizarre a move for anyone to make. I'm always glad to see more educational content on the platform but between borrowed clips, a borrowed logo, and a channel name already in use by a major television program I'd be a bit more wary of plagiarism in the future. I get the impression that this channel exists out of a passion to educate rather than to farm views and for that reason I'm not going to hurl accusations around or anything. best of luck to your channel!

[LasseGreiner]

I chime in on the good educational video material. However, the manufacturing of silicone is much more elaborate than just melting sand. Sand is mainly SiO2 (more precisely, the sand used is chosen to be mainly that). This is then reduced and converted to give silicone rods which are non-transparent and not shown at all in the video. These rods are purified further by zone melting and then the wafers are sliced of. This oversight makes me wonder how accurate the descriptions are in the parts of the process I have no clue about....

[Aspen]

I'm a Layout Designer, and I just wanted to let you know I appreciate that you acknowledged the most important step to making microchips. Most videos I have seen never talk about mask design, just the fabrication process. Great video!

[audreyyyhappened]

I've been wondering for some time now, and I'm baffled how the first few batches of microchips were even manufactured with all the precise technology required beforehand. And even more, the complexity in inventing the microchip through all those landscape designs, I adore it. Thanks for the explanation!

[yehiaelyamani]

I find it remarkable that computers are within affordable price ranges for ordinary people, given the complex, elaborate production processes involved