Microelectronics

Microelectronics is the design and manufacture of extremely small electronic components and circuits, especially integrated circuits built on semiconductor materials.

Semiconductor: A material whose electrical conductivity lies between that of a conductor and an insulator and can be controlled by impurities or fields. Semiconductors provide the controllable electrical behavior on which most microelectronic devices depend.
Integrated circuit: An electronic circuit whose components and interconnections are fabricated together on a semiconductor substrate. It is the defining product of microelectronics, combining many devices in one chip.
Microprocessor: A programmable processor implemented as an integrated circuit that executes instructions and processes data. Microprocessors use dense transistor circuits to perform general-purpose computation.
Printed electronics: Electronic devices and circuits formed by depositing functional inks through printing processes. Printed electronics favor inexpensive, flexible large-area devices over dense silicon circuitry.
Doping (semiconductor): The deliberate addition of impurities to a semiconductor to change its electrical properties. Doping creates the charge-carrier regions needed to form electronic devices on a chip.
Wafer fabrication: The sequence of material deposition, patterning, etching, doping, and related steps used to make semiconductor devices on wafers. Repeated wafer processes build the device layers that implement a microelectronic circuit.
Dynamic random-access memory: A volatile semiconductor memory that stores each bit as charge in a capacitor controlled by a transistor. DRAM demonstrates how microelectronic structures provide high-density working memory.
Nanotechnology: The manipulation and application of matter at dimensions roughly from one to one hundred nanometers. Microelectronics increasingly relies on nanoscale structures, though nanotechnology covers many fields beyond circuits.
p–n junction: A boundary between p-type and n-type semiconductor regions, with electrical behavior that depends on applied voltage. Its rectifying behavior underlies diodes and many transistor structures.
Semiconductor device fabrication: The manufacture of semiconductor components through controlled processing of semiconductor materials and structures. It translates microelectronic device designs into physical components.

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