Semiconductor Manufacturing: Making Impossibly Small Features

Semiconductor Manufacturing: Making Impossibly Small Features

The Lam Research Development Lab

The manufacture of semiconductors has attracted a lot of interest of late, especially because the U.S. produces such a small global share of the most advanced chips. Dutch company ASML’s standout results and raised guidance make lithography and its $150 million extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines the center of attention in this complex manufacturing space. But making semiconductors is about more than how fine a pattern you can “print” with a litho machine. Inside one of these factories, or “fabs” as they are known in industry parlance, there are hundreds of different types of “tools” that are used to create microscopic features using not only silicon, but a wide range of other materials at an atomic level of precision. Beyond just silicon, many of these materials are insulators, some of them are electrical wiring for signals, and many require processes with fundamentally incompatible materials.