Silicon wafer

A thin, polished disc of crystalline silicon used as a substrate for semiconductor devices. Its controlled crystal structure and surface quality support the formation of precisely patterned electronic components.

Photolithography: A patterning process that transfers a mask design onto a surface using light-sensitive material. It defines the fine features built in successive layers on a wafer.
Silicon: A chemical element and semiconductor widely used to make electronic devices. The wafer is a single-crystal form of this semiconductor.
Metallurgical-grade silicon: Silicon produced by reducing silica, with purity suitable for metallurgical uses but insufficient for most electronics. It is a common industrial starting material for electronic-grade silicon purification.
Integrated circuit: An electronic circuit whose components and connections are fabricated together on a semiconductor substrate. Silicon wafers host the patterned layers from which integrated circuits are made.
Semiconductor device fabrication: The sequence of processes that forms semiconductor devices on a substrate. Wafer specifications constrain the many steps in this larger manufacturing sequence.
Chemical vapor deposition: A process that forms solid films on a surface through chemical reactions of vapor-phase precursors. It adds insulating, conducting, or semiconductor films to wafer surfaces.
Single-crystal silicon: Silicon whose atoms form one continuous crystal lattice throughout a solid. A wafer's continuous lattice provides a uniform substrate for device fabrication.
Electronic-grade silicon: Silicon purified to the extremely low impurity levels required for semiconductor manufacturing. It supplies the high-purity feedstock used to grow wafer crystals.
Microprocessor: A programmable processor implemented as an integrated circuit. Microprocessors are among the complex devices fabricated across silicon wafers.
Wafer diameter: The width of a semiconductor wafer, commonly specified in millimeters. Larger diameters allow more dies per wafer but require substantial process and equipment changes.

Linked from 6 pages