What is the technology behind manufacturing a semiconductor chip?

April 9, 2024
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN Topics

No Comments

What is the technology behind manufacturing a semiconductor chip?

Subject: Science and Tech

Section: Awareness in IT

Context:

The TATA group has partnered with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) to set up a 300mm wafer fabrication plant in Gujarat. It will roll out its first 28nm chip in 2026. Two assembly and test plants in Gujarat and Assam have also been recently approved by the Government of India.

What is a semiconductor chip? How is it manufactured?

A semiconductor chip is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator.
It acts as a very weak conductor in its pure form, but its conductivity can be significantly enhanced by introducing small amounts of specific substances, known as ‘dopants’.
Through a process akin to using stencils (referred to as ‘masks’ in the semiconductor industry) and spray paint (analogous to dopants), complex circuits can be crafted
This method allows for the precise control of the semiconductor’s electrical properties to create intricate and functional electronic circuits.

What does India’s semiconductor ecosystem look like?

India’s semiconductor ecosystem is notably strong in the chip design sector, a strength dating back to the 1990s.
With the advancements in computer-aided design (CAD), it’s possible to design semiconductor chips entirely through software, enabling engineers to specify chip functionality, translate this into electronic circuits, validate these circuits, and optimize them for speed, power consumption, and size, all from their computers.
The finalized chip design is then encapsulated into a file and sent off to a fabrication plant for physical manufacturing, akin to creating and printing a graphic novel digitally.
With a solid foundation in chip design, supported by a continuous influx of skilled electronics and computer engineers, India is well-positioned to expand into semiconductor manufacturing.
This expansion into manufacturing offers opportunities for a broader range of professionals—including process and control engineers, data scientists, material scientists, physicists, and chemical engineers—to make significant contributions to the industry, capitalizing on the interdisciplinary nature of semiconductor manufacturing.

Related terminologies	Description
Transistor	A transistor is a fundamental electronic component made from a semiconductor, serving primarily as an electronic switch. It is crucial in enabling the functionality of semiconductor chips, which contain millions to billions of these switches to perform various logical and computational tasks. Beyond acting as switches, transistors are also employed as amplifiers, such as in boosting weak signals for cell phones, and are essential in circuits for generating and processing high-frequency signals in wireless communications. These versatile applications of transistors are often integrated into a single semiconductor chip, exemplified by the WiFi chips in mobile devices.
Fabrication Technology	Fabrication technology in the semiconductor industry refers to the evolving manufacturing processes that have significantly advanced over the past six decades, enabling the production of semiconductor chips with ever-increasing levels of miniaturization. Alongside miniaturization, there have been notable improvements in transistor performance, including faster switching speeds for more computations per second and reduced power consumption for longer battery life and lower heat dissipation. The industry describes advances in fabrication technology using terms like ’45nm’, ’28nm’, and ’16nm’, where ‘nm‘ stands for nanometer. These labels indicate the level of miniaturization achievable with each technology, with smaller numbers signifying greater miniaturization and efficiency. Research is increasingly focused on exploiting the third dimension—height—by stacking circuits atop one another to maintain performance reliability and further reduce chip sizes, thus continuing the trend of semiconductor miniaturization. As the length and breadth of a transistor switch decreases, increasing its height can help ensure reliable performance.
Wafer	A wafer, in the context of semiconductor manufacturing, is a thin, circular piece of semiconductor material, typically silicon, on which a multitude of chips are printed, similar to how a sheet of postage stamps is produced. These chips are arranged in an array on the wafer, which is then sliced, or “diced,” to separate the individual chips. Utilizing larger wafers is beneficial as it enables the production of more chips per wafer, enhancing both the speed and cost-efficiency of chip manufacturing.

Source: TH