Semiconductor fabrication plant

A semiconductor factory ( fab English, short for semiconductor fabrication plant), also known as semiconductor or chip factory, is a factory that produces for the semiconductor and microelectronics industry in the integrated circuits ( IC).

Construction

At the production control substantial claims are made. The central part of a semiconductor plant represents the clean room in which, for the lowest possible contamination of the air by particles provision shall be made, as these affect the yield significantly. In addition, it must provide an area where temperature and humidity can be controlled and also provide protection against shocks. Since it is continuously produced in a semiconductor factory, which means 7 days a week, 24 hours per day, these and other conditions must be guaranteed at all times (eg, supply of consumables media and electric power supply). Production is carried out in batches, that is, the actual " work pieces ", the wafers are in a lot ( typically 25 wafers ) are combined and processed together. The production time for a lot depends on the complexity of the product and is between a few days to a few months.

In the clean room manufacturing facilities are located for the numerous methods of semiconductor technology, the integrated circuits are manufactured with their methods. These systems include steppers, etching equipment, cleaning equipment, ion implanters and metrology, as ellipsometer, scanning electron microscopes or darkfield microscopes. In a semiconductor factory, the plants are not as in other sectors of mass production, such as the automotive industry, with an assembly line connected (see flow production ), but are generally the same in groups of the same plant or plant production section together ( cf. workshops manufacturing ). By increasing automation ( including automatic delivery and collection of the lots ), this grouping or the proximity to facilities prior or subsequent production steps less relevant, so this system arrangement must be less strictly implemented.

Costs

Due to the ever increasing demands and increasing wafer diameters, the construction costs for a semiconductor plant in decades rose steadily. The cost of building a modern semiconductor plant for 300 mm wafers are currently (2012 ) at several billion U.S. dollars. For example, the cost in 2012 was put into operation Fab15 by TSMC in Taiwan around 9.3 billion USD. The high investment costs and the economic pressure and continuously utilize the production, led to the fact that especially in the last 15 years, former semiconductor company with its own factories (english integrated device manufacturer, IDM) transform into pure design company. The production for the companies without their own semiconductor plants (English fabless semiconductor company ) again take over companies that have specialized in the contract manufacturing of semiconductor products, known as foundries. This concept also allows smaller, less financially strong companies manufacture their products with current techniques.