TABLE OF CONTENTS In this chapter, you will be introduced to the semiconductor industry with a description of the historic product and process developments and the rise of semiconductors into a major world industry. The major manufacturing stages, from material preparation to packaged product, are introduced along with the mainstream product types, transistor building structures, and the different integration levels. Industry product and processing trends are identified.
Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to:
Describe the difference between discrete devices and integrated circuits.
Define the terms solid-state, planar processing and N-type and P-type semiconducting materials.
List the four major stages of semiconductor processing.
Explain the integration scale and at least three of the implications of processing circuits of different levels of integration.
List the major process and device trends in semiconductor processing.
The electronics industry got its jump start with the discovery of the audion vacuum tube in the 1906 by Lee Deforest.1 It was made possible the radio, television, and other consumer electronics. It also was the brains of the world s first electronic computer, named the Electronic Numeric Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC), first demonstrated at the Moore School of Engineering in Pennsylvania in 1947.
This ENIAC hardly fits the modern picture of a computer. It occupied some 1500 square feet, weighed 30 tons, generated large quantities of heat, required the services of a small power station, and cost $400,000 in 1940 dollars. The ENIAC was based on 19,000...
