ANATOMY / SILICON TO CIRCUIT
How a chip is made
Tiny patterns, built one layer at a time. Watch a magnified patch of silicon change, then see how those repeated steps lead to a finished chip.
FIG. 01 · MAGNIFIED MODEL01 / 10
A tiny patch of a much larger waferSilicon
Material being patternedTemporary photoresistExposed resistConductors
Teaching model: shapes, thicknesses and animation time are exaggerated. The rectangular specimen is a tiny wafer patch; the stage is a display fixture, not a single machine that performs all these operations. Actual fabs use many tools and repeated cleaning, alignment, inspection, doping, heating and polishing steps. The final scenes skip many fabrication cycles. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter.
Based on ASML’s manufacturing overview.
Based on ASML’s manufacturing overview.