Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment

The process of manufacturing integrated circuits is so complex that it could involve more than 50 different pieces of semiconductor equipment from the time silica is used as input to grow ultrapure ingots where wafers are taken from to the time integrated circuits built from these wafers are shipped to the customers.

Equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing may be classified into three categories, namely, wafer fab, assembly, and test/back-end equipment.  Obviously, this classification follows the three major semiconductor manufacturing processes, i.e., wafer fab, assembly, and test.

Wafer fabrication equipment come in various forms, most of which specialize in growing, depositing or removing materials from a wafer.  Examples of wafer fabrication equipment are oxidation systems, epitaxial reactors, diffusion systems, ion implantation equipment, physical vapor deposition systems, chemical vapor deposition systems, photolithography equipment, and etching equipment.  These equipment take turns in depositing and removing different materials on and from the wafer in specific patterns until the circuit is completely built on the wafer.