Manufacturing Process of Central Processing Unit (CPU)

(1) Silicon purification

The material for producing chips such as CPUs is semiconductors, and at present, the main material of semiconductors is silicon. Silicon is a non-metallic element with semiconductor properties and is suitable for the fabrication of various tiny transistors. It is currently one of the most suitable materials for the manufacture of modern large-scale integrated circuits. During the silicon purification process, the raw silicon is melted and placed in a huge quartz furnace. At this time, a seed crystal is placed in the furnace so that the silicon crystal grows around the seed crystal until the nearly perfect single crystal silicon is formed.

(2) Dice the wafer

The manufactured silicon ingots are shaped into cylinders and then dice into sheets, which are called wafers. The so-called "dice the wafer" is to use a machine to dice a predetermined silicon wafer from a single crystal silicon rod and divide it into small areas, each of which will become a die of CPU. In general, the thinner the wafer is, the more CPU products can be manufactured with the same amount of silicon material.

(3) Photolithography Etching

A photoresist is applied on the silicon oxide layer obtained by the heat treatment, and the ultraviolet ray is irradiated to the silicon substrate by a template printed with a complicated circuit structure pattern of the CPU, and the photoresist is dissolved by the ultraviolet ray. In order to avoid some areas from being disturbed by light, masks must be made to cover these areas. After the light is stopped and the mask is removed, the exposed photoresist film is washed away with a specific chemical solution, and a layer of silicon is placed next to the resist film. The exposed silicon will then be bombarded with atoms to create the N or P well. Combined with the substrate fabricated above, the CPU's gate circuit is completed.

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