English
Narrowly speaking, semiconductor materials mainly include elemental semiconductors (e.g., germanium, silicon) and compound semiconductors (e.g., gallium arsenide), of which the most widely used and commercially successful is silicon.
As early as around 1880, the semiconductor properties of some materials were discovered, and the term semiconductor was first used in 1911. The actual systematic laboratory verification of the main properties of semiconductors was not realized until the end of 1947. It took nearly 70 years for semiconductors to be fully recognized from the time of their discovery, mainly because semiconductor single-crystal materials were not easy to make and were difficult to verify under the technological and process conditions of the time.
In the 70 years since World War II, technology has advanced rapidly and crystal manufacturing techniques have been perfected, and the invention of semiconductor integrated circuits around 1960 has dramatically increased the value of semiconductor materials. Today, nearly 7 billion transistors can be made on a tiny silicon wafer of about 4 square centimeters. That is to say, in a small piece of silicon can be made on a micro-information processor, and information processing speed is extremely fast. Semiconductors have become the core components of all kinds of electronic products.
We know that circuits have a certain function because there are various changes in the current inside them. The main reason why the current is formed is because there are electrons flowing between the metal wiring and the electronic components. In order to meet the demands of mass production, the electrical properties of semiconductors must be predictable and stable, so very strict requirements must be followed, including the purity of dopants and the quality of the semiconductor lattice structure. For a semiconductor device, defects in the material lattice are often the main factor affecting the performance of the device. The importance of semiconductor materials in the semiconductor industry is evident.
Broadly speaking, the semiconductor industry's materials industry includes a wide range of the following classification.
According to the nature of the material can be divided into two categories: silicon material and other materials. Silicon materials, i.e. silicon single crystal materials, are the most widely used basic materials in the semiconductor industry, mainly including silicon crystals for chips and silicon crystals for equipment. The former is used to manufacture silicon wafers or chips, and the latter is mainly used to manufacture etching machine electrodes and other equipment parts.
According to the production process, it can be divided into two categories: chip manufacturing materials and packaging materials. The former includes silicon wafers, photoresists, mask plates, lithography auxiliary reagents, chemicals, electronic gases, targets, polishing fluids and polishing pads. The latter include frame, substrate, ceramic encapsulant, encapsulation resin, bonding wire, mounting materials and so on.
The above are just a few major classifications of the semiconductor materials industry. In fact, the semiconductor materials industry is the semiconductor industry chain in the most subdivided areas of the link, as many as hundreds of fine molecule industry.
It is worth mentioning that silicon crystal materials for equipment are often not recognized or even ignored and questioned because they are far away from the general public. However, in fact, its position in the semiconductor materials industry is very important. Without it, many important equipment in the semiconductor industry can not work, chip manufacturing can not be realized.
