Photolithography

In order to alter specific locations on a wafer, a photoresist layer is first applied (as described in the section Deposition). Photoresist, or just resist, typically dissolves in a high-pH solution after exposure to light (including ultraviolet radiation or X-rays), and this process, known as development, is controlled by using a mask. A mask is made by applying a thick deposit of chrome in a particular pattern to a glass plate. The chrome provides a shadow over most of the wafer, allowing “light” to shine through only in desired locations. This enables the creation of extremely small areas—depending on the wavelength of the light used—that are unprotected by the hard resist.

After washing away the developed resist, the unprotected areas can be modified through the deposition, etching, or implantation processes described above, without affecting the rest of the wafer. Once such modifications are finished, the remaining resist is dissolved by a special solvent. This process is repeated with different masks at various layers (30 or so) to create changes to the wafer.

The person who designs the masks for each layer is called the layout engineer, or mask designer. The selection of circuit components and connections is given to mask designers by circuit designers, but mask designers have great latitude in deciding how the end product will be created, which layers will be used to build the components, how to design the connections, how it will look, how large it will be, and how well it will perform. Successful IC development is a team effort between circuit and mask designers.

The final package

After all the changes to the wafer have been completed, the thousands of individual IC units are sliced apart. This is called dicing the wafer. Each IC unit is now called a die. Dies resemble satellite images of cities, in which circuits look like roadways.

Each die that passes testing is placed into a hard plastic package. These plastic packages, called chips, are what one observes when looking at a computer’s circuit board. The plastic packages have metal connection pins that connect the outside world (such as a computer board) to the proper contact points on the die through holes in the passivation layer.