Semiconductor technologies

 

ABSTRACT

The advantages of automation, its architecture, and semiconductor production automation. This article provides a summary that 100-GHz and 100-Gb/s semiconductor active units are currently available on the market, based on semiconductor characteristics and device requirements. The state of competing technologies is then presented in two distinct fields, together with oscillators that demonstrate their behaviour in analogue circuit applications and frequency dividers that demonstrate their suitability for high-speed digital circuits. Then a description of the most widely utilised applied sciences follows.

Keywords : Semiconductor Technologies ,Automation, Basic Properties & Materials Processes, Benefits, Applications.

Ø  INTRODUCTION :

The technology of high-performance compound semiconductors is becoming more diverse. GaAs, the historical business, is continuously scrutinised for both current and future uses. Due to the gradual shift in the economics of semiconductor manufacturing brought about by the rise in capitalization costs of semiconductor fabrication facilities, few manufacturers can afford to increase products for specialised niche markets, such as radiation-hardened devices.  The production of semiconductors is sometimes regarded as the most difficult and complicated process, involving significant financial investment and cutting-edge technology. In the daily operations of producing semiconductors, automation plays an increasingly important role. Similar to other industries, automation in semiconductor production began with the replacement of human operators for tasks that required repetitive, risky, or dangerous actions.

Ø  METHODOLOGY :

Automation in semiconductor production should speed up the processes involved in fabricating semiconductors, which involve depositing layers of materials on substrates, doping them with impurities, and patterning them with photolithography to create integrated circuits. It is possible to quickly integrate semiconductor company automation into existing manufacturing facilities because to the hierarchical desktop manipulation structure utilised in this industry. The lower levels of the hierarchy in the design cover embedded controllers for real-time management and assessment of fabrication equipment with sensors installed for in-situ monitoring and characterization. At the upper level, handling, scheduling, and execution of progressively complex, context-dependent procedures, metrology operations, or fabric movements occur. A quicker, shorter cycle time process is needed for a variety of semiconductor production techniques.

Modern semiconductor production increasingly uses cluster tools, each of which comprises of several single-wafer processing chambers, due to development, greater yield, and less contamination. We demonstrate the operation of automation in semiconductor fabrication tools using a PDV (Physical Vapour Deposition) cluster device.

Reduced costs, improved fab performance, reliability, and product quality are all benefits of fab automation.

Fundamentally, fab automation must separate fab activities, which are groups or successions of the aforementioned jobs:

1. Locating and going the lot decision to determine which lot to system

2. Process requirements are established by a recipe and setting of circumstances.

3. Launch the system to begin the procedure.

4. File and file dimension information are gathered using the facts-gathering approach during processing.

5. To select the acceptability of the processing result, utilise go/no-go fine gating.

6. Use exception handling to manage and resolve manufacturing exceptions

7. Controlling alarms to respond to set alarms.

Ø  Properties of semiconductor material

The characteristics of the constituent semiconductor materials and the device structure have the most effects on the performance of electronic devices that operate at very high frequencies ..Si, GaAs, and InP are now the favoured materials for devices with cut-off frequencies of 300 GHz and above. The energy gap, carrier transport properties, and thermal conductivity are only a few of the important qualities that are included in the table below. The features of the In GaAs lattice that combines InP, GaN, and InAs are also discussed.

Large enough band holes are effective because they have strong breakdown qualities. In reality, voltages on the order of a few volts over a hundred nm are no match for Si, GaAs, and InP. Additionally, p-n junctions have a well-defined rectifying conduct with very minimal leakage current at room temperature. GaN enables even higher breakdown voltages, whereas InAs’s tiny power hole limits its application to very low voltage devices. The science of high-performance compound semiconductors is becoming more and more diverse. GaAs, the long-standing industry pillar, is continually scrutinised for both current and upcoming product applications. Thanks to advances in wide bandgap semiconductor technologies, there are now opportunities for electric vehicles.In terms of switching losses and on-resistance, GaN and SiC technologies are more efficient than standard Si units. This will enable engineers to increase switching frequency while also enhancing motor pressure effectiveness.

Ø  Manufacturing

         Financial reasons are a barrier to the use of wide-bandgap applied sciences in automobile motor drives since Sic science is incompatible with widely used manufacturing tools. The heteroepitaxy technology, which is manufactured using modern production equipment, is used in industrial GaN switches. With the recent availability of less priced GaN-on-Si switches for industrial devices, wide-band gap research has advanced significantly.

Ø  Voltage Limitations

    GaN-on-Si is an affordable switching solution with good efficiency for low-voltage applications. However, these switches are not commercially available at voltages above 650 V at this time. On the other hand, SiC MOSFETs are available at medium voltage levels (1,200 V and higher).

Ø  Efficiency of semiconductor technologies

     Naturally, a highly efficient motor drive system will result in a highly efficient product, but it also lowers the cost of the electric car by removing the restrictions on battery storage and thermal design. Compared to other technologies, GaN-on-SiC technologies show greater efficiency and highest switching frequency figures. These switches are more expensive to produce both SiC and GaN-on-Si, hence they are not cost-effective for automotive motor drive applications.

                       Fig. 1 The measured signals from a low-speed gate driver for SiC MOSFETs.

Ø  Thermal Response

At temperatures above 300 °C, wide-bandgap technologies often exhibit significantly lower intrinsic carrier concentrations than Si, as well as reduced thermal requirements due to efficiency improvements. SiC is more heat-conductive than other materials. Due to these factors, the package design and thermal constraints are both further eased.

Ø  Scalability/Internal Diode

Due to the high current needs of automobile motor drives, power switches must be multiplexed. To maximise the volume of the die and simplify the internal wire topology, traditional Si power MOSFETs have a vertical configuration.

                    Fig. 2 The on-resistance versus blocking voltage of different tech-neologies.

Ø  Benefits To the Semiconductor Industry

This more complete logic memory connectivity (LMC) density measure [DL, DM, DC] can describe the essential technological properties of semiconductor technologies, which are becoming more subtle and complex. Even though companies may still choose to use their preferred labels to market their products, the LMC density measure can act as a common language to gauge technological advancements among semiconductor manufacturers for their customers and other parties to improve straightforward communication. Tech vendors and researchers may focus on one or more of the LMC metric's components.

Ø  CONCLUSION

Attempts to prevent and end fraud in ordinary fab operations led to the beginning of automation in the semiconductor industry. As semiconductor technology and the semiconductor industry continue to improve and grow, manufacturing systems must be developed fast to meet the industry’s changing technical and commercial requirements. Production of semiconductors has been hampered by automation islands. These systems suffer from inadequate integration, a lack of flexibility and capability, and high ownership costs. In this chapter, we examined how important automation and integration are to the production of semiconductors. There is discussion of some fab automation factors. The tool, cell, and fab automation for semiconductor manufacturing is described, along With the three-level hierarchical distributed automation architecture. Numerous semiconductor materials and technologies are well suited for applications demanding 100 GHz and 100 Gb/s.