Purification of Silicon

The deserts of Arizona are home to Intel's Fab 32, a $3billion factory that's
performing one of the most complicated electrical engineering feats of our time.

It's here that processors with components measuring just 45 millionths of a millimetre
across are manufactured, ready to be shipped out to motherboard manufacturers all
over the world.

Creating these complicated miniature systems is impressive enough, but it's not the
processors' diminutive size that's the most startling or impressive part of the process.

It may seem an impossible transformation, but these fiendishly complex components

are made from nothing more glamorous than sand. Such a transformative feat isn't
simple. The production process requires more than 300 individual steps.

We've taken an in-depth look at Intel's manufacturing method and distilled the whole
process into 10 stages. So, to find out how sandcastles become Core i7 processors,
read on – and prepare to be amazed.

Step one: Converting sand to silicon

Sand is composed of silica (also known as silicon dioxide), and is the starting point
for making a processor. Sand used in the building industry is often yellow, orange or
red due to impurities, but the type chosen in the manufacture of silicon is a purer form
known as silica sand, which is usually recovered by quarrying.

To extract the element silicon from the silica, it must be reduced (in other words, have
the oxygen removed from it). This is accomplished by heating a mixture of silica and
carbon in an electric arc furnace to a temperature in excess of 2,000°C.

The carbon reacts with the oxygen in the molten silica to produce carbon dioxide (a
by-product) and silicon, which settles in the bottom of the furnace. The remaining
silicon is then treated with oxygen to reduce any calcium and aluminium impurities.
The end result of this process is a substance referred to as metallurgical-grade silicon,
which is up to 99 per cent pure.

This is not nearly pure enough for semiconductor manufacture, however, so the next
job is to refine the metallurgical-grade silicon further. The silicon is ground to a fine
powder and reacted with gaseous hydrogen chloride in a fluidised bed reactor at
300°C to give a liquid compound of silicon called trichlorosilane.

Impurities such as iron, aluminium, boron and phosphorous also react to give their
chlorides, which are then removed by fractional distillation. The purified
trichlorosilane is vaporised and reacted with hydrogen gas at 1,100°C so that the
elemental silicon is retrieved.

During the reaction, silicon is deposited on the surface of an electrically heated ultra-
pure silicon rod to produce a silicon ingot. The end result is referred to as electronic-
grade silicon, and has a purity of 99.999999 per cent.

Step two: Creating a cylindrical crystal

Although pure to a very high degree, raw electronic-grade silicon has a polycrystalline
structure. In other words, it's made up of lots of small silicon crystals, with defects
called grain boundaries between them. Because these anomalies affect local electronic
behaviour, polycrystalline silicon is unsuitable for semiconductor manufacturing.

To turn it into a usable material, the silicon must be turned into single crystals that
have a regular atomic structure. This transformation is achieved through the
Czochralski Process. Electronic-grade silicon is melted in a rotating quartz crucible
and held at just above its melting point of 1,414°C.

A tiny crystal of silicon is then dipped into the molten silicon and slowly withdrawn
while being continuously rotated in the opposite direction to the rotation of the
crucible. The crystal acts as a seed, causing silicon from the crucible to crystallise
around it. This builds up a rod – called a boule – that comprises a single silicon
crystal.

The diameter of the boule depends on the temperature in the crucible, the rate at
which the crystal is 'pulled' (which is measured in millimetres per hour) and the speed
of rotation. A typical boule measures 300mm in diameter.

Step three: Slicing the crystal into wafers

Integrated circuits are approximately linear, which is to say that they're formed on the
surface of the silicon. To maximise the surface area of silicon available for making
chips, the boule is sliced up into discs called wafers.

The wafers are just thick enough to allow them to be handled safely during
semiconductor fabrication. 300mm wafers are typically 0.775mm thick. Sawing is
carried out using a wire saw that cuts multiple slices simultaneously, in the same way
that some kitchen gadgets cut an egg into several slices in a single operation.

Silicon saws differ from these kitchen tools in that the wire is constantly moving and
also carries with it a slurry of silicon carbide, the same abrasive material that forms
the surface of 'wet-dry' sandpaper. The sharp edges of each wafer are then smoothed
down to prevent the wafers from chipping during later processes.