Week 9 - Lecture 26 for EEE132 Electronic Devices 27th April, 2012

In this lecture, I had briefly covered 8 processes that are needed in fabricating an integrated circuit such as the simplest diode to the more advanced microprocessors. The fabrication processes are covered by Streetman in Section 5.1: thermal oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), rapid thermal processing (RTP), photolitography, etching, and metallization. Thermal oxidation is to assist in preparing the semiconductor to reach high temperature (~1000 C) and and can be achieved rapidly using RTP. Diffusion and ion implantation are two processes that can be utilized in horizontal furnace (for smaller diameter wafer) and vertical furnace (for larger wafer). The CVD is the extension from the processes that had been discussed in Chapter 1 when we talked about Crystal Growth. With the use of several masks, photolitography, etching and metallization are used to realize the semiconductor's interconnects and isolation areas.