Building Circuits

Etching Circuits

The circuits of the computer are built on a chip of single crystal silicon, often called a wafer. The single crystal silicon wafer (using a single crystal is for special electrical properties) is crystalized in a crucible by allowing the silicon to slowly crystalize unto a seed crystal. Then this single crystal ingot is sliced into wafers to be used in further processing. The wafers are cut to a precise size. All this processing of wafers and circuits must be done using clean room techniques. A speck of dust would destroy a circuit and lots of dust would destroy all the circuits.

Belows is a cross sectional view of the manufacture of integrated circuits.

We also begin doping areas of the chip surface.

The circuit design used here originated with Wikimedia Commons

(By Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16935119).

Showing how Computer Circuits are Created in a Clean Room

This is how the circuits are made.

Of course the processes are on a very small scale to show process details.