Fabrication of silicon-based integrated circuits

Credit: DAVID PARKER/SEAGATE MICROELECTRONICS LTD/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Caption: Fabrication of silicon-based integrated circuits (chips), showing a technician monitoring the progress of low-temperature, plasma-enhanced nitride passivation, performed to protect the metal interconnect layer on the chip. Individual chips are constructed on a single wafer of crystalline silicon (visible at bottom centre). The complicated pattern of embedded layers and zones which comprises each integrated circuit was created by successive imaging, etching and deposition or growth processes. This particular wafer consists of chips that will be used to control the motors in computer disk drives.

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Keywords: chip fabrication, chip manufacture, electronic, electronics, high-tech, integrated circuit, microchip, passivation, plasma nitride, semiconductor industry, silicon chip, technology

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