IC Chips: The Ultimate FAQ Guide 1. What is IC Chips? IC chips are sets of electronic circuits on a small flat silicon semiconductor material or a chip. It is a semiconductor wafer with millions of tiny capacitors, transistors, and resistors. Integration of a higher number of minute MOS transistors into smaller chips results in faster and less expensive devices. 2. What do IC Chips do? You can use IC chips for different functions depending on the applications such as: IC ChipsIC Chips 3. What is Inside IC Chips? IC chips consist of millions of different components that assist in the normal function of the IC chip. The main components of the IC chips include: 4. How are IC Chips made? In order to make an IC chip, you need to follow the following steps： tep One: Preparation Stage At this point you need to have the blue print of the IC chip that you intend to make ready. You need to come up with a proper design which can either be standard or it can also be unique. Standard designs are available for you to choose from different shelves such as amplifiers, and analog switches among others. Unique designs will require research, development and extensive design work such coming up with new microprocessors for computers. With the design at hand, you will need to find the raw materials for making the integrated circuit chips. The main raw materials that you will need include: You have to ensure that you are working in a clean room with filtered air, light frequencies and no foreign particles. The operators within the clean room should also have gloves, lint-free garments, and covers for their feet and head. Step Two: Actual Manufacturing Process First you will make a single yet thin slice of silicon consisting of hundreds of integrated circuits. After that you will cut the individual IC circuits apart thus making individual IC chips. The manufacturing process begins with:        i. Preparation of Silicon Wafer You will heat the silicon to melting point of about 1400 degrees Celsius inside a vacuum chamber. Make sure that you avoid contamination by containing the heated region by surface tension which gets rid of impurities. The impurities flow down to the base of the silicon which you will cut off completely and remain with pure silicon. Using a wafer slicer, you will cut a thin round silicon wafer according to size specifications before polishing the surface. Coat the layer of silicon wafer using silicon dioxide resulting in the formation of insulating base and prevent further oxidation.       ii. Masking Using a computer aided drafting machine, you will prepare the design and then make the image into a mask. After that you will optically reduce the mask and transfer it to the surface of the wafer. The mask has cleat and opaque parts depending on the design with integrated images of all the components. You will place a drop of photoresist material at the center of silicon wafer and spread it by spinning rapidly. Bake the photoresist after spreading to remove the solvent before irradiating using short wave ultraviolet light. Remove the mask and dissolve portions of the photoresist before chemically etching the areas that are still uncovered. You can as well subject it to chemical doping in an attempt to create layers of P and N regions.     iii. Doping You will then dope the device by either atomic diffusion or Ion implantation. Doping involves the addition of a layer that will create P or N regions. Atomic diffusion involves placing wafers in a quartz tube oven and heating to about 816 – 1205 degrees Celsius. You will add the doping chemical on an inert gas which will deposit on the hot surface of the wafers without masks. Ion implantation involves ionizing dopant gas to provide high energy dopant ions and then fired to specific regions. The ions will go through the wafer and remain implanted. Step Three: Making of Successive Layers In this stage, you will repeat all the process in step two for every successive layer of the chips. You might need to lay down a layer of silicon dioxide that will provide an insulator between the components. You can achieve this through the process of chemical layer deposition before placing a final layer of silicon dioxide. You will also perform final etching that will open up the contact points before depositing a layer of aluminum. The layer of aluminum will make the contact pads after which you will test the individual layers for electrical functionality. Step Four: Making Individual IC chips In this case, you will separate the hundreds of individual chips by scoring cross hatches of line using fine diamond cutters. After that, you will place the sheets under pressure and they will separate thus forming individual IC chips. You will inspect the individual chips to remove any damaged chips as well as chips that fails the electrical test. The good chips are bonded individually into mounting packages before connecting the thin wire leads by thermocompression or ultrasonic bonding. You will then mark the chips using identity marks such as part numbers as well as other information. Step Five: Final Packaging After the final testing you will package the IC chips in a hard plastic package. This is the part that you will see when you look at the motherboard of a computer or any device with IC chips. The package has connection pins that connect the IC chips to the printed circuit board. After that, the integrated circuit chip will be ready for shipping. Integrated circuit chips 5. How many Types of IC Chips are there? There are different types of IC chips available depending on the type of classification. Classifications based on the intended application presents three main types including: This can either be linear IC chips or Radio Frequency IC chips Apart from that, you may also come across another type of digital IC chip known as the logic circuit IC chip. This type