Microchip Fabrication: A Practical Guide to Semiconductor Processing, Fifth Edition

By Peter Van Zant

Glossary

acceptor: An impurity that causes semiconducting materials to accept valence electrons, thereby leaving holes in the valence band. The holes act like carriers of positive charge, referred to as P type.
aligner (align and expose): A process tool used to align wafers and masks or reticles and expose the photoresist with a UV or other radiation source.
alignment: Refers to the positioning of a mask or reticle with respect to the wafer.
alignment marks: Targets on the mask and wafer used for correct alignment.
alloy: (1) A compound composed of two metals. (2) In semiconductor processing, the alloy step causes the interdiffusion of the semiconductor and the material on top of it, forming on ohmic contact between them.
aluminum (Al): The metal most often used in semiconductor technology to form the interconnects between devices on a chip. It can be applied by evaporation or sputtering.
amorphous: Materials with no definite arrangement of atoms, e.g., plastics are amorphous.
angstrom: A unit of length, an angstrom ( ) is one ten-thousandth of a micron (10 ⁴ ?m) or 100,000,000 = 1 cm.
anistropic: An etch process that exhibits little or no undercutting.
anneal: A high-temperature processing step (usually the last one), designed to minimize stress in the crystal structure of the wafer.
antimony (Sb): A Group V element that is an N-type dopant in silicon. It is often used as the dopant for the buried layer.
arsenic: A Group V element that is an N-type dopant in silicon.
assembly: The...

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Microchip Fabrication: A Practical Guide to Semiconductor Processing, Fifth Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Glossary

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Microchip Fabrication: A Practical Guide to Semiconductor Processing, Fifth Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Glossary

A-B

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