Epitaxy and the Process of Silicon Wafer

For silicon wafer processing a wafer needs to meet certain quality specifications, like chemical, mechanical, surface specifications, and electrical specifications. It is important that Epi wafer undergo these quality criteria so a wafer is marked as defect-free and of excellent quality. For different electronic applications, there is the use of high-quality wafers in semiconductor manufacturing. To guarantee that the devices produced are efficient it goes through a series of thorough processing, including epitaxial growth. This article depicts epitaxial growth and its significance in manufacturing semiconductors.

Epitaxial Growth or Epitaxy

Epitaxy plays an important role in silicon wafer processing for semiconductor applications. Epitaxial growth or epitaxy is a process in which over a single crystal substrate a fine layer of single-crystal material is transferred along with the help of chemical vapor deposition. Epitaxy is performed to boost and develop the performance of bipolar devices. It helps in giving good control to the doping concentration of the devices, therefore making the layers oxygen and carbon-free. An example is the deposition of silicon over a silicon substrate. Epi wafer suppliers are present everywhere to supply good quality wafers.

Silicon Wafer Processing

In producing high-quality wafers meticulous and thorough silicon wafer processing plays a huge role. We provide premium quality wafers at an affordable price at wafer world.

Finishing of the Process

With the use of an epitaxial reactor, the chemical vapor deposition of epitaxial growth is attained. It consists of a quartz reaction where a susceptor is placed. To the wafers, the susceptor provides mechanical support and with thermal distribution, it creates an environment. At high temperatures, an epitaxial deposition is performed which allows gasses to flow into the chamber. In Silicon epitaxy, it is observed that over thickly-doped silicon substrate there is the involvement of growing a thinly doped epi layer. Across the collector-substrate junction, this is done to achieve a higher disintegration voltage along with keeping low collector resistance. A higher operating speed is permitted by a lower collector resistance by using the same level of current. From Epi wafer manufacturer you can easily manufacture wafers according to your requirements.

Know About The Advantages of Epitaxy

The word is derived from the Greek epi meaning above, and taxis meaning in an ordered manner. In the forming of layers, it involves the deposition of silicon or silicon compounds that help to continue and perfect the crystal structure of the bare silicon wafer below. The electrical characteristics of the Epi wafer surface are improved by epitaxy, which makes it suitable for highly complex microprocessors and memory devices. Selective Epitaxy is an Epitaxy process that on certain predetermined areas of the wafer only deposits silicon or a silicon compound.

Events Occurring During Epitaxy

To form the transistor channel region, as well as the source and drain, there is the selective deposition of Epitaxial layers. The source is the point where charge carriers like electrons enter the channel, and they leave from the drain. There is a gate between them that controls the conductivity of the channel. It can be even switched to allow electrons to flow or to prevent them from flowing. Epi wafer manufacturers can dope Epitaxy films to very precise concentrations of the dopant elements by combining them with additional elements in the processing source gases.

Advantages

In a highly controlled manner Epitaxy improves the electrical characteristics of the wafer surface, making it very much suitable for highly complex microprocessors and memory devices.​​​

In the current scenario, we see that in the microelectronics industry CMOS technology is the driving technology, and the conventional way of fabricating integrated circuits on bulk silicon substrates has given problems such as the difficulty of making shallow junctions, unwanted parasitic effects, and latch-up. In recent years, in many aspects to their bulk counterparts, the advent of Silicon-on-Insulator has proven superior. The advantages here are the absence of latch-up, ability to operate at high temperature, the ease of making shallow junctions, radiation hardness, the reduced parasitic source and drain capacitances, improved transconductance, and sharper sub-threshold slope.

In creating SOI wafers there are several approaches available and here we discuss two particular techniques. First, through the Ultra-Thin Silicon process where high-quality Silicon-on-Sapphire (SOS) material is formed we seek to illustrate a heteroepitaxy technique. Next, to grow a homogenous crystal laterally on an insulator Epi wafer supplier look at a homoepitaxy technique called Epitaxial Lateral Overgrowth (ELO) technique which seeks.

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