Semiconductor Fabrication Plant
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A Semiconductor Fabrication Plant is a manufacturing plant that produces semiconductor devices and integrated circuits.
- AKA: Semiconductor Fab.
- Context:
- It requires many expensive devices like steppers, scanners, etching machines, doping machines etc.
- It can be a costly plan, e.g. over $1 billion.
- It can (typically) contain a dust-free clean room environment.
- It can (typically) be created by a Semiconductor Fabrication Plant Creation Task.
- It can (typically) be supplied by a Semiconductor Fabrication Plant Supply Task.
- It can (typically) be maintained by a Semiconductor Fabrication Plant Maintenance Task.
- It can be operated by an Integrated Device Manufacturer or a pure play foundry.
- ...
- Example(s):
- a Pure-Play Foundry, such as TSMC Foundry and GlobalFoundry Foundry .
- an Intel Fab, such as: ____.
- a Samsung Fab, such as: ____
- ...
- Counter-Example(s):
- A Mask Fabrication Plant makes photomasks, not final ICs.
- A Packaging & Test Facility only packages and tests chips.
- A Fabless Semiconductor Company like Qualcomm does not operate fabs.
- ...
- See: Semiconductor Design, Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM), Microelectronics Industry, Wafer (Electronics), Photolithography, Fabless Manufacturing, Foundry Model.
References
2023
- (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants Retrieved:2023-7-16.
- This is a list of semiconductor fabrication plants. A semiconductor fabrication plant is where integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips, are manufactured. They are either operated by Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) who design and manufacture ICs in-house and may also manufacture designs from design-only (fabless firms), or by pure play foundries who manufacture designs from fabless companies and do not design their own ICs. Some pure play foundries like TSMC offer IC design services, and others, like Samsung, design and manufacture ICs for customers, while also designing, manufacturing and selling their own ICs.
2023
- (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/semiconductor_fabrication_plant Retrieved:2023-7-16.
- In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory for semiconductor device fabrication. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its Fab15 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan. [1] The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion. A foundry model emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed fabless semiconductor companies. Those foundries, which did not create their own designs, were called pure-play semiconductor foundries. The central part of a fab is the clean room, an area where the environment is controlled to eliminate all dust, since even a single speck can ruin a microcircuit, which has nanoscale features much smaller than dust particles. The clean room must also be damped against vibration to enable nanometer-scale alignment of machines and must be kept within narrow bands of temperature and humidity. Vibration control may be achieved by using deep piles in the cleanroom's foundation that anchor the cleanroom to the bedrock, careful selection of the construction site, and/or using vibration dampers. Controlling temperature and humidity is critical for minimizing static electricity. Corona discharge sources can also be used to reduce static electricity. Often, a fab will be constructed in the following manner: (from top to bottom): the roof, which may contain air handling equipment that draws, purifies and cools outside air, an air plenum for distributing the air to several floor-mounted fan filter units, which are also part of the cleanroom's ceiling, the cleanroom itself, which may or may not have more than one story, a return air plenum, the clean subfab that may contain support equipment for the machines in the cleanroom such as chemical delivery, purification, recycling and destruction systems, and the ground floor, that may contain electrical equipment. Fabs also often have some office space.
The clean room is where all fabrication takes place and contains the machinery for integrated circuit production such as steppers and/or scanners for photolithography, in addition to etching, cleaning, doping and dicing machines. All these devices are extremely precise and thus extremely expensive. Prices for most common pieces of equipment for the processing of 300 mm wafers range from $700,000 to upwards of $4,000,000 each with a few pieces of equipment reaching as high as $340,000,000 each (e.g. EUV scanners). A typical fab will have several hundred equipment items.
- In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory for semiconductor device fabrication. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its Fab15 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan. [1] The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion. A foundry model emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed fabless semiconductor companies. Those foundries, which did not create their own designs, were called pure-play semiconductor foundries. The central part of a fab is the clean room, an area where the environment is controlled to eliminate all dust, since even a single speck can ruin a microcircuit, which has nanoscale features much smaller than dust particles. The clean room must also be damped against vibration to enable nanometer-scale alignment of machines and must be kept within narrow bands of temperature and humidity. Vibration control may be achieved by using deep piles in the cleanroom's foundation that anchor the cleanroom to the bedrock, careful selection of the construction site, and/or using vibration dampers. Controlling temperature and humidity is critical for minimizing static electricity. Corona discharge sources can also be used to reduce static electricity. Often, a fab will be constructed in the following manner: (from top to bottom): the roof, which may contain air handling equipment that draws, purifies and cools outside air, an air plenum for distributing the air to several floor-mounted fan filter units, which are also part of the cleanroom's ceiling, the cleanroom itself, which may or may not have more than one story, a return air plenum, the clean subfab that may contain support equipment for the machines in the cleanroom such as chemical delivery, purification, recycling and destruction systems, and the ground floor, that may contain electrical equipment. Fabs also often have some office space.
- ↑ Begins Construction on Gigafab In Central Taiwan , issued by TSMC, 16 July 2010