How to balance the efficiency of the round wafer and the square chip?

In the semiconductor business, wafers and chips are very important. Wafers are generally round sheets, and the chips that end up in electronic devices are mostly square. The difference in their shape is not just a matter of looking good, it involves many aspects, such as production efficiency, how materials are used, and heat dissipation.

Wafer production and characteristics

Wafers are thin sheets made of monocrystalline silicon or other materials in a special way. This thing is not small in diameter, like 8 inches, 12 inches, and even bigger. The wafer is rounded because the crystal growth technology is the same at the time of production. After melting, crystal pulling, cutting these processes, in order to get high quality single crystal materials.

What good is this round wafer? At the time of processing, relying on rotating equipment, the chemical substances can be evenly dispersed, doping, oxidation, etching these processes can be very efficient. Moreover, the circular design can largely avoid the additional loss caused by the change of the direction of the tool during processing, and the production efficiency will go up. In addition, the circular wafer is heated more evenly when the material is cooled and heat treated, and there will be no uneven heating and bad effects.

Design and efficiency

Unlike wafers, chips are usually square or rectangular. This design is mainly in order to make better use of space, and it is also convenient to put on the circuit board. Using a square design can put more chips in the unit area, and production efficiency is increased. When designing the chip, engineers have to take into account the characteristics of the material, the ability of the process to work, and thermal management. Therefore, when the square chip is designing the circuit, various functional modules can be laid out more flexibly, the signal delay can be reduced, and the current path can be optimized. This layout is particularly suitable for places that require high density integration, such as mobile phones, servers, and data centers.

Efficiency trade-off

It's the relationship between the wafer and the chip. From the point of view of material utilization, circular wafers will have some edge loss during processing. When the wafer is cut into chips, because the shape is not the same, there will inevitably be some scrap. For those large diameter wafers, it is particularly important to design as many square chips as possible. However, because the chip is square, the wafer is round, when the two guys match, how many pieces can be cut in the end, how much waste, this balance has to be carefully considered when designing.

For example, when making a part, if the wafer is cut into a standard square chip, a 300mm wafer can produce about 80 square chips, not taking into account the scrap material. But if you take into account the wear and tear on the side, the actual amount of good stuff you get is lower. Therefore, the designer of the production line has to find the best cutting method and make the most of the material.

Heat dissipation and performance

The circular design of the wafer performs well in terms of heat dissipation, and the designer can manage the heat fairly evenly by optimizing the distribution of the material and the channel of heat dissipation. However, the optimization of the heat dissipation performance of the square chip is more complicated, and these things have to be added to the thermal conductive materials and heat sinks. Another advantage of the square design of the chip is that its flat layout can easily integrate a number of functional electronic devices together, without engaging in that kind of complex design.

However, the circular design of the wafer will have less technical trouble when chamfering and packaging, and the manufacturing process can be relatively simple, and the overall efficiency will go up. This leads to a thing, in the case of the continuous development of modern semiconductor technology, how to balance the benefits of circular wafer thermal management and the benefits of square chip layout space utilization, which is something many manufacturers want to do.

Now this technology is also having a significant impact on efficiency. Nowadays, with the development of advanced process technology, manufacturers are trying to reduce the size of the chip and improve the integration. In the process, lithography, materials science, and thermal management techniques are all advancing, so that the advantages of square chip design can be better utilized when combined with circular wafers.

Moreover, with the continuous improvement of uniformity, linewidth, heat dissipation, these technologies, wafers and chips in the design and efficiency tradeoff, is not a simple choice. In areas such as computer hardware, automotive electronics and mobile phones, manufacturers are trying to flexibly control the shape, structure and function of wafers and chips to achieve the best performance.

In order to improve production efficiency, people in this industry are also constantly trying new wafer processing technologies and chip design methods. For example, the use of modular design and integrated circuit design software to improve the overall design and production efficiency. In the selection of materials, the application of new synthetic materials and nanotechnology also provides more possibilities to solve the problem of efficiency tradeoffs between wafers and chips.

As AI and automation technology develops faster and faster, the design of chips and the processing of wafers will become smarter and more accurate in the future, and the entire semiconductor industry can also move forward. By adding adaptive algorithms and simulation techniques to the design, the coordination between the wafer and the chip can be effectively predicted and optimized at the beginning of the design, and the production efficiency can be continuously increased.

In this changing environment, the round wafer and the square chip are no longer only a choice, but a combination of new design concepts and production methods. Through effective methods, the entire semiconductor industry chain can be promoted, so that it can develop better!