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> It’s surprisingly dark, too. For decades, Intel’s cleanrooms have been lit like darkrooms, bathed in a deep, low yellow. “That’s an anachronism,” says Mark Bo

by Cyph0n 10y ago

> It’s surprisingly dark, too. For decades, Intel’s cleanrooms have been lit like darkrooms, bathed in a deep, low yellow. “That’s an anachronism,” says Mark Bohr, a small, serious man who has spent his entire 38-year career making chips, and who’s now Intel’s top manufacturing scientist. “Nobody’s had the courage to change it.” Wait, what? Isn't that UV-free light? Ultraviolet light is used in the mask exposure step, so using normal light in the room would basically remove all of the photoresist before photolithography. I guess they've automated the process to the point where the wafers are never exposed to light even when moving between steps.

shivsta 10y ago
They might be referring to the fact that the room might not have photo-resistive materials or the fact that they have not investigated other methods that could allow them to use white light in the room.
jjoonathan 10y ago
Or they've moved so damn far into the UV that their photoresist doesn't even care about the wimpy just-beyond-visual peaks coming out of fluorescent lights.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  Everyone's still using 193nm light because it's so painful to go further. It's easier to solve the ridiculous problems involved when etching features a twentieth the size of your wavelength.
pipio21 10y ago
With a SLA 3d printer you use a filter in the case so UV light is filtered. You can identify those machines because they are colored: https://www.b9c.com/assets/images/bg/bg-home-header.png https://www.b9c.com/assets/images/bg/bg-home-header.png By the way the people at Intel are working with ultra UV, and every material is opaque to them. That is the reason for the use of reflection surfaces instead of lenses for new machines.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  I see, but my point is about the transportation and handling of the wafers. Extreme UV is mentioned in the article, but they'll use that for the 5 nm process. I don't think ultra UV exists.
TFortunato 10y ago
This is true. The wafer carrying "foups" mentioned are actually an acronym for Front Opening Unified Pods, which is what carry the wafers from machine to machine in batches of up to 25 wafers at a time. They are typically UV opaque yellow, or black. The wafers aren't ever actually out in the open in the room at any time. (As an aside, since the air quality of the room was mentioned...god forbid you ever broke a wafer in the foup. Entire lot in that box is ruined, and cleaning the foup itself and the equipment front ends is a giant PITA) Source: was engineer at Varian Semiconductor / Applied Materials, who make all those giant tools that Intel and the other fabs use. Intel was definitely one of our largest customers and our most technically demanding.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Oh cool! I was exposed to some tools in a class 100 cleanroom at my research institute. None of them were from Varian though. The lab director always told me that the stuff used in academia is nothing compared to the tools used in large fabs like Intel and TSMC. By the way, how do tool manufacturers make money? Is it basically sales + maintenance + repairs? Do you have any idea what kind of profit margins they operate on?
  - TFortunato 10y ago
    Very cool! Money came mainly from sales, but we also offered training courses and had a large services and maintenance division, since the tools did require periodic maintenance. A lot of these tools also have "consumables", just like other large pieces of equipment. Gas sources, graphite liners for beamline components, etc. As a whole the industry was very cyclical though. We would employ a ton of people in the factories in the years when everyone was moving to new process nodes, but in the years in between there could be lots of manufacturing layoffs / shifts to part time. On the engineering side work was more constant since we would be busy working on the next generation of tools. When I left we were working on the transition from 300mm wafers to 450mm (12 in. to 18 in.) As far as the profit margins went, I forgot our divisions exact numbers, but AMAT as a whole had roughly ~40% gross profit margins from what I remember. Being on the supplier side of the millions/billion dollar fab builds is a good business :-)

by Cyph0n 10y ago

shivsta 10y ago

They might be referring to the fact that the room might not have photo-resistive materials or the fact that they have not investigated other methods that could allow them to use white light in the room.

jjoonathan 10y ago

Or they've moved so damn far into the UV that their photoresist doesn't even care about the wimpy just-beyond-visual peaks coming out of fluorescent lights.

Dylan16807 10y ago
Everyone's still using 193nm light because it's so painful to go further. It's easier to solve the ridiculous problems involved when etching features a twentieth the size of your wavelength.

pipio21 10y ago

With a SLA 3d printer you use a filter in the case so UV light is filtered. You can identify those machines because they are colored: https://www.b9c.com/assets/images/bg/bg-home-header.png https://www.b9c.com/assets/images/bg/bg-home-header.png By the way the people at Intel are working with ultra UV, and every material is opaque to them. That is the reason for the use of reflection surfaces instead of lenses for new machines.

Cyph0n 10y ago
I see, but my point is about the transportation and handling of the wafers. Extreme UV is mentioned in the article, but they'll use that for the 5 nm process. I don't think ultra UV exists.

TFortunato 10y ago

This is true. The wafer carrying "foups" mentioned are actually an acronym for Front Opening Unified Pods, which is what carry the wafers from machine to machine in batches of up to 25 wafers at a time. They are typically UV opaque yellow, or black. The wafers aren't ever actually out in the open in the room at any time. (As an aside, since the air quality of the room was mentioned...god forbid you ever broke a wafer in the foup. Entire lot in that box is ruined, and cleaning the foup itself and the equipment front ends is a giant PITA) Source: was engineer at Varian Semiconductor / Applied Materials, who make all those giant tools that Intel and the other fabs use. Intel was definitely one of our largest customers and our most technically demanding.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Oh cool! I was exposed to some tools in a class 100 cleanroom at my research institute. None of them were from Varian though. The lab director always told me that the stuff used in academia is nothing compared to the tools used in large fabs like Intel and TSMC. By the way, how do tool manufacturers make money? Is it basically sales + maintenance + repairs? Do you have any idea what kind of profit margins they operate on?
- TFortunato 10y ago
  Very cool! Money came mainly from sales, but we also offered training courses and had a large services and maintenance division, since the tools did require periodic maintenance. A lot of these tools also have "consumables", just like other large pieces of equipment. Gas sources, graphite liners for beamline components, etc. As a whole the industry was very cyclical though. We would employ a ton of people in the factories in the years when everyone was moving to new process nodes, but in the years in between there could be lots of manufacturing layoffs / shifts to part time. On the engineering side work was more constant since we would be busy working on the next generation of tools. When I left we were working on the transition from 300mm wafers to 450mm (12 in. to 18 in.) As far as the profit margins went, I forgot our divisions exact numbers, but AMAT as a whole had roughly ~40% gross profit margins from what I remember. Being on the supplier side of the millions/billion dollar fab builds is a good business :-)