This is how Processors are made | CPUs manufacturing stages from A to Z  

Have you ever wondered how processors or integrated circuits or what is known as IC are manufactured!

Have you ever caught an electronic circuit and thought carefully about the journey these components took to line up together in the shape?

In this topic, we will learn together about the manufacturing stages that processors and digital integrated circuits go through from the beginning to the moment the product comes out and is packaged.

And the start here is from the sand ... those grains that cover the surface of the desert.

Before wondering about the link between sand and processors, let me tell you that the entire electronics industry is based on silicon that is extracted from sand.

Silicon represents approximately 25% of the mass of sand, which makes it the second most abundant chemical element after oxygen. Sands, especially quartz sand, contain a high percentage of silicon dioxide (SiO2), which is the main material in the semiconductor industry that make up the processors.

The first stage - the silicone mold

 And at the manufacturing stage, it begins with preparing a mold / ingot of melted silicon. Silicon is purified at this stage through several steps to reach the level of purity required for the manufacture of semiconductors (such as the transistor) by reaching what is called "electronic grade silicon", which is a silicon with a high purity of 99.9999%. This means that every billion silicon atoms have been It contains one atom of another foreign substance, or what is known as “impurities.” This mold has a diameter of 30 cm and a weight of 100 kg.

After extracting the silicon mold, it is cut into slices called “wafers” and polished until it becomes smooth and smooth like a mirror:

The second stage - filming and drilling

After the chips are cut, each chip is treated separately by covering it with a layer of blue liquid, a light-sensitive substance similar to the substance that was placed on film tape in old photographic cameras.

The wafer is then exposed to ultraviolet rays to print the electronic design on it in a very small size, allowing hundreds of processor circuits to be printed on a single chip.

Hundreds of circuits have now been printed as mentioned on this chip, let us now go closer to one of these separate circuits and see what steps will be taken on them as it is now considered as a small processor that has not yet matured.

The level that we will move to now is what is called the "transistor level", which means that we will be dealing with dimensions between 50-200 nanometers (a nanometer: one in a billionth of a meter)

And the transistor for those who do not know is an electronic switch whose function is to control the flow of current in the processor:

As mentioned previously, the anti-imaging material (blue liquid) has been added to the chip in order to print the required paths

The goal of this layer is simply that we will drill paths on this chip, and therefore there are areas that will be drilled and areas that will remain as they are..and drilling here does not mean that we will use a tool or machine to carry out this task..and rather this will be done by exposing it to materials that will erode the required areas Work paths out

Now I assume that you have deduced the goal of the blue substance, which is to hide the areas that we do not want to expose to the corrosive substance, meaning that it acts as a mask. The mask was added in the first stage, then exposed to a substance that corrodes the chip, then removed the blue material after the completion of the required task, so that the chip remains with the desired paths

To bring the matter closer to your mind, dear reader, the whole thing is like owning a large plot of vacant land and wanting to establish a tourist village on it, so you start drawing lines and service paths, planning facilities ... etc. Then implementation and construction in successive stages and layers:

The third stage - ion placement

At this stage, the real construction and the placement of ions are started in the same way as the previous photography, with the difference this time that we will not dig paths, but rather we will draw new paths with ions to act as conduction lines for the electric current, so we will add the blue material again and expose it to ultraviolet rays to draw the new paths and then throw the ions Which will take the new shape of the tracks, and the speed of throwing these ions to more than 300 thousand kilometers per hour

After this step is completed, the blue material is removed again to make the new pathways clear:

Metallic electroplating

At this stage, the processing of the transistor is completed by placing copper ions on its surface by a method known as the electroplating method.

Copper ions settle on the transistor surface

Metal chips and tracks for connecting and connecting different transistors (it's like building a multi-storey building), and the shape of these layers and paths is determined by the design made by the design and engineering team in charge of the company (such as Intel or AMD)

Sometimes the number of these layers reaches 20 layers. Notice here that we are still dealing in the level of the transistor, meaning that all these works and constructions are carried out in dimensions not exceeding 200 nanometers (that is, one centimeter can contain more than 50 thousand of them)

The processing unit of the computer consists of millions of transistors, as we have followed together the stages of creating one of them, and these transistors are connected to the layered system as we saw in the previous step and through this linking the logic gates are created which carry out the processing operations that the computer performs from simple operations such as addition and multiplication to To more complex operations to varying degrees.

Preliminary testing and cutting phase

At this stage, the small chip (millions of transistors assembled together) is subjected to the first test of efficiency by exposing it to feeding and monitoring the response from it and then comparing it to the results prepared in advance.

The large chip is then sliced, which was all the work done on from the start and contained hundreds of repeat processors

They are cut to separate each processor separately and then pick up the processors that passed the first test for efficiency with a precise robotic arm in preparation for the next step, which is packaging:

Encapsulation

At this stage, the electronic chip is wrapped with the cover that gives the processor the appearance that we are used to seeing in it, the lower part of this case contains the electrical connections and connection points with the computer, which are those golden-colored points at the base of the processor, and the upper part of the casing, which is metallic, represents the interface of the loss Thermal, through which the heat resulting from the passage of current during treatment is discharged and this loss is done by placing a cooling unit (fan with thermal paste):

Test and packing

At this stage, the processors are subjected to a final test to ensure their technical specifications and basic characteristics such as the thermal loss rate and the maximum frequency of the processor.

After testing the technical specifications, they are collected together in drawers specially equipped to contain them and then be packaged commercially for distribution in markets and outlets.