KLA Tencor - Industry

Industry

The semiconductor or chip industry is KLA-Tencor’s core focus. The semiconductor fabrication process begins with a bare silicon wafer—a round disk that is six, eight or twelve inches in diameter, about as thick as a credit card and gray in color. The process of manufacturing wafers is itself highly sophisticated, involving the creation of large ingots of silicon by pulling them out of a vat of molten silicon. The ingots are then sliced into wafers and polished to a mirror finish. The manufacturing cycle of an IC is grouped into three phases: design, fabrication and testing. IC design involves the architectural layout of the circuit, as well as design verification and reticle generation. The fabrication of a chip is accomplished by depositing a series of film layers that act as conductors, semiconductors or insulators. The deposition of these film layers is interspersed with numerous other process steps that create circuit patterns, remove portions of the film layers, and perform other functions such as heat treatment, measurement and inspection. Most advanced chip designs require hundreds of individual steps, many of which are performed multiple times. Most chips consist of two main structures: the lower structure, typically consisting of transistors or capacitors which perform the “smart” functions of the chip; and the upper “interconnect” structure, typically consisting of circuitry which connects the components in the lower structure. When all of the layers on the wafer have been fabricated, each chip on the wafer is tested for functionality. The wafer is then cut into individual devices, and those chips that passed functional testing are packaged. Final testing is performed on all packaged chips.