A wafer fab is the most complex factory humanity builds: a few core unit processes run as a loop hundreds of times to print a billion transistors on a disc of silicon. A first-principles tour of litho, etch, dep, implant, and CMP; cleanroom logistics; the three-month, thousand-step cycle; and why a leading-edge fab costs north of twenty billion dollars.
Lithography
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How a Wafer Fab Works -
How Chips Are Actually Fabbed: From Ingot to Package Semiconductor fabrication is the most capital-intensive manufacturing process humanity has ever devised: five hundred process steps, wavelengths of light shorter than a bacterium's cell wall, and a single fab that costs more than a nuclear aircraft carrier. Here is how it actually works.