Wafer Manufacturing

2Wafer Manufacturing: Generalized Processes and Flow

2.1 Introduction

Wafer manufacturing, or wafer production, refers to a series of processes that make wafers of different shapes and materials for microelectronics fabrication and other applications. Prime wafers are produced from various materials, such as silicon, silicon carbide, lithium niobate, gallium arsenide, III–V semiconductor materials, and optoelectronics materials. Wafer manufacturing processes are also employed to produce photovoltaic (PV) wafers from single or polycrystalline silicon. Figure 2.1 illustrates the process flow and categories of wafer manufacturing. A wafer is a thin slice of material, usually in a round shape, that is prepared with mirror‐finish surface ready for device fabrication. Wafer manufacturing has been brought to the limelight largely due to semiconductor and microelectronics fabrication in the second half of the twentieth century. With the advent of silicon‐based solar wafer technology in the 1990s, a wave of new machine tools were deployed to produce silicon wafers. In the few years that followed, the microelectronics industry started to adopt wiresaws as the mainstream technology for wafer slicing, resulting in a wholesale change of manufacturing lines from inner‐diameter (ID) saws to wiresaws. These machine tools facilitate the development of larger wafers of diameters 300 mm, or larger, in microelectronics fabrication.

2.2 Wafer Manufacturing: Generalized Process Flow

The generalized ...