HYKwCS-CH02-S06-TheComputerChip

Silicon wafers with millions or billions of tiny components, faster, smaller, and cheaper to produce than circuits from individual components.

• Photoresist
• Integrated Circuits
• Manufacturing Chips
• Photolithography

Chips are made in semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) with clean rooms to protect from dust particles, workers wear suits and masks.

• Integrated Circuits
• Photolithography
• Photoresist
• Manufacturing Chips

Integrated circuits with millions of tiny components etched into silicon wafers, sealed into ceramic cases with metal pins.

• Silicon Wafers
• Photoresist
• Computer Chip
• Photolithography

American electrical engineer who created the first integrated circuit in 1958, based on tiny transistors, replacing bulky vacuum tubes.

• Photoresist
• Microprocessor Circuits
• Moore's Law
• Jack Kilby

Substance coating the wafer to protect it from chemicals, can be dissolved by shining ultraviolet light to reveal the wafer beneath.

• Photoresist
• Photomask
• Photolithography
• Transistors

Tiny devices on computer chips used to amplify or switch electric current, the higher the number, the more powerful the chip.

• Computer Chip
• Photoresist
• Photomask
• Transistors

Process of removing a thin layer of silicon from areas of the wafer covered with soluble photoresist, done by washing with acid or blasting with plasma.

• Photoresist
• Etching
• Photolithography
• Photomask

Designed by teams of engineers using software to define behavior, then translated into a layout of components.

• Integrated Circuits
• Moore's Law
• Jack Kilby
• Microprocessor Circuits

Sheets of pure silicon from which dozens of chips are created at the same time, cut into individual chips after creation.

• Computer Chip
• Transistors
• Silicon Wafers
• Photolithography

Process of creating a series of layers on the wafer by repeating the photoresist and etching process, resulting in transistors.

• Photomask
• Computer Chip
• Photolithography
• Silicon Wafers