What material is a chip composed of

The chip is mainly made of silicon material, and its size is only half of a fingernail; A chip is composed of hundreds of microcircuits connected together, with a small volume and filled with microcircuits that generate pulsed currents; It is the main product of microelectronics technology. An integrated circuit chip is an electronic component that includes a silicon substrate, at least one circuit, a fixed sealing ring, a grounding ring, and at least one protective ring.

Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and deoxidized sand, especially quartz, contains up to 25% silicon in the form of silicon dioxide, which is also the foundation of the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

In addition, widely used diodes, transistors, thyristors, field-effect transistors, and various integrated circuits are all made of silicon as raw materials. Using monocrystalline silicon wafers as the substrate, MOSFET or BJT components are fabricated using photolithography, doping, CMP, and other techniques, and then wires are made using thin film and CMP techniques to complete chip fabrication.

The first step is silicon melting: at the 12 inch/300mm wafer level, silicon with known quality for semiconductors is obtained through multiple purification steps, known as electronic grade silicon. On average, there is only one impurity atom per one million silicon atoms. Finally, a single crystal silicon ingot was obtained: the overall shape is basically cylindrical, weighing about 100 kilograms, and the silicon purity is 99.9999%.

Silicon ingot cutting: Cutting a single silicon wafer horizontally into a circular shape, which is commonly referred to as a wafer. The cut wafer becomes almost flawless after polishing, and the surface can even serve as a mirror. The mission of sand can only come to an end, and the rest can only be processed through complex technology to form chips.

Silicon reserves are extremely abundant, with oxygen accounting for 49.4% of the earth's crust and silicon making up 26.4% of the total mass of the crust, making it the second most abundant element. Imagine using one-third of the Earth to make chips, it's probably impossible to run out of them even in the face of time. So there's no need to worry about using up all the silicon when making chips.

The semiconductor industry chain can be roughly divided into three main links: upstream links such as equipment, materials, and design, midstream wafer manufacturing, and downstream packaging and testing. Semiconductor materials are a very important link in the upstream of the industrial chain, playing a crucial role in the production and manufacturing of chips. According to the semiconductor chip manufacturing process, semiconductor materials can generally be divided into three major materials: substrate, manufacturing, and packaging. The substrate material is mainly used to manufacture silicon wafer semiconductors or compound semiconductors, while the manufacturing material is mainly used to process the silicon wafer or compound semiconductor into various materials required for the chip manufacturing process. The packaging material is the material used in the chip packaging and cutting process.
At that time, electronic diode computers were too bulky, weighing 30 tons and covering an area of 170 square meters. The power consumption per hour was almost equivalent to half a month's worth of electricity used by urban households in China today. So in order to improve this situation, transistor computers were developed, which is the predecessor technology of the chips we use now. Silicon has become the main raw material for making chips because of its large reserves and stable properties. But turning the ubiquitous sand into chips is an extremely complex project. For example, now that Huawei has been sanctioned by the United States, high-end chips are difficult to sustain.
High purity monocrystalline silicon is an important semiconductor material. Doping trace amounts of Group IIIA elements into single crystal silicon to form p-type silicon semiconductors; Incorporating trace amounts of Group VA elements to form n-type semiconductors. By combining p-type and n-type semiconductors to form a p-n junction, a solar cell can be made that converts radiation energy into electrical energy. It is a very promising material in the development of energy.