INTELECTUAL PROPERTY LAW:

“PROCESS OF MAKING AN INTEGRATED CHIP”

RESUME

Arranged by
Ray Hans Surjadinata
2006489836

FACULTY OF LAW
INTERNATIONAL CLASS
UNIVERSITAS INDONESIA
2021
 When you hear the terms Intel or AMD, what is the first thing that springs to mind?
Computer chips or phone processors are probably the first things that come to mind. As our
civilization progresses, mobile processors or chips are required more than ever to power our
computers, phones, televisions, and other electronic gadgets, particularly in the period of the
pandemic, when more people are staying at home and utilizing their electronic devices even
more. Have you ever wondered how these small chipsets are manufactured, given how much
we rely on them to run our cherished electric devices? This article will define and discuss the
overall production procedure as well as the commonly used terms.
1. Mask
As one of the first step of several phases involved in the production of a
chipset, the first one would be the complex use of masks. A mask is a template
for printing circuitry onto silicon wafers where engineers made computerized
designs from chip designers to build masks, which may be thought of as chip
blueprints with billions of transistors created and sent into the equipment that
turns data into an electron beam. 1 Those electron beams scan the mask's surface
and print to create the circuitry layout. Every mask must be flawless with zero
faults, and the entire procedure takes around five days. 2 The masks are then
shipped to manufacturers, where manufacturing technicians utilize stepper and
scan machines to create hundreds of individual chips by shining light
(lithography) through the mask, through a lens to minimize the picture, and then
on to the surface of the wafer. 3
2. Lithography
Lithography as stated above is one of the utilities used in the process of
creating Integrated Circuits within computer chips. Deep ultraviolet lithography is
used to transfer images onto a substrate used in chipmaking in this stage, which is
located inside the process beside the mask and the wafer. 4 As previously said, light is
directed onto a mask that contains the circuit pattern to construct the integrated circuit
design on a microprocessor. The light would then pass through the mask and through
1
“Photomask,” Semiconductor Engineering, October 2, 2020,
https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/manufacturing/lithography/photomask/.
2
Intel Mask Operation: An Inside Look at a Critical Manufacturing Step, YouTube (Intel, 2019),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ws0UebnSE.
3
How Intel Makes Chips: Concept to Customer, YouTube (Intel Newsroom, 2020),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oQoZF_KRCc.
4
Electron Beam Lithography, YouTube (Raith Nano Fabrication, 2019),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWV9pvdRBNY.
 a series of optical lenses, which would reduce the size of the image. 5 This little image
is then projected onto a wafer, which is made of silicon or semiconductor which then
will help to project the circuit’s layout into the wafer.6
3. Wafer
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, usually silicon, that is used
to be the base of an integrated circuits. Wafers are made by purifying silicon, melting
it, and cooling it to form an ingot, which is then sliced into discs called wafers. 7 In a
fabrication facility, or "fab," chips are manufactured in a grid formation on the wafer
surface at the same time. Microelectronic devices are produced in and on these
wafers, and they act as the substrate for them. 8 It would then be one of the steps in the
chip-making process, alongside the processes outlined above. Individual microcircuits
that are already printed by the light would then create the layouts on the surface of the
wafer.9 After that, the microcircuits will be separated by wafer dicing which creates
bits of sliced wafer called “die”. To finish the processor, the die is sandwiched
between a substrate and a heat spreader so that it can provide necessary power and
electrical connections.10
4. Doping
As previously said, the manufacture of a semiconductor material requires the
use of a defect-free, pure and faultless material. Doping, on the other hand, introduces
impurities into clean semiconductors with the goal of altering conductivity due to a
lack or excess of electrons that can be caused by the production process, which is in
stark contrast to wafer and mask production. 11 Diffusion or ion implantation (or alloy)
can be used to introduce foreign compounds into the wafer, which can improve its

5
Intel: The Making of a Chip with 22nm/3D Transistors , YouTube (Intel, 2012),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9SWNLZvA8g.
6
Ibid.
7
Sand to Silicon - the Making of a Chip, YouTube (Intel Newsroom, 2009),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCOyq4YzBtY.
8
Intel, “Silicon Chips: What Are Computer Chips Made of?,” Intel (Intel Corporation), accessed
October 15, 2021, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-making-silicon.html.
9
Photomasks Explained (Contact and Projection): How to Etch Thin Chromium
Layers, YouTube (Huygen optics, 2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foMT8gLYxBY.
10
“Silicon Wafer,” Wafer & Substrate Products| Semiconductor Wafer Inc (Semiconductor, Inc),
accessed October 15, 2021, http://www.semiwafer.com/product.html.
11
R. Witmann, “Semiconductor Doping Technology,” Miniaturization Problems in CMOS Technology:
Investigation of Doping Profiles and Reliability (IUE), accessed October 15, 2021,
https://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/wittmann/node7.html.
 electrical conductivity.12 When a semiconductor is doped to such high levels, it takes
on the characteristics of a conductor rather than a semiconductor. A degenerate
semiconductor is the term for this phenomenon.13
5. Sandwich
The phrase "sandwich" refers to the layering of silicon chips, each of which is
covered with components, resulting in a more powerful circuitry. Because computers
require very powerful chips to process data efficiently, clusters of other chips to store
programs, data, and instructions are also required and must be built separately, which
is inefficient, resulting in bulkier computers and slowing PC operation by forcing the
chips to create streams of data traffic with the resulting bottlenecks in the connections
between them.14 Microchips nowadays can have up to 30 layers of silicon sandwich,
which serve as a data highway between transistors.15 As a result of this structure,
which embeds the memory and high-speed logic, the chips can function at the same
time without compromising performance, and the system can efficiently communicate
between each component without requiring too many streams of connections.

12
Vallerie Mott, “Doping: Connectivity of Semiconductors,” Energy Bands in Solids (Lumen),
accessed October 15, 2021, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introchem/chapter/doping-connectivity-of-
semiconductors/.
13
Phillip Laube, “Semiconductor Technology from A to Z,” Doping techniques - Waferfabrication -
Semiconductor Technology from A to Z - Halbleiter.org (Halbeiter), accessed October 15, 2021,
https://www.halbleiter.org/en/waferfabrication/doping/.
14
Michel Marriott, “I.B.M.'s Chip Sandwich: Packing in a Lot of Power,” The New York Times (The
New York Times, March 11, 1999), https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/11/technology/what-s-next-ibm-s-chip-
sandwich-packing-in-a-lot-of-power.html.
15
Chris Woodford, “How Do Transistors Work?,” Silicon Sandwiches (Explain that Stuff, September 21,
2020), https://www.explainthatstuff.com/howtransistorswork.html.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Electron Beam Lithography. YouTube. Raith Nano Fabrication, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWV9pvdRBNY. 

Intel Mask Operation: An Inside Look at a Critical Manufacturing Step. YouTube. Intel,

2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ws0UebnSE. 

Intel. How Intel Makes Chips: Concept to Customer. YouTube. Intel Newsroom, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oQoZF_KRCc. 

Intel. “Silicon Chips: What Are Computer Chips Made of?” Intel. Intel Corporation.
Accessed October 15, 2021.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-making-silicon.html. 

Intel: The Making of a Chip with 22nm/3D Transistors . YouTube. Intel, 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9SWNLZvA8g. 

Laube, Phillip. “Semiconductor Technology from A to Z.” Doping techniques -

Waferfabrication - Semiconductor Technology from A to Z - Halbleiter.org. Halbeiter.
Accessed October 15, 2021. https://www.halbleiter.org/en/waferfabrication/doping/. 

Marriott, Michel. “I.B.M.'s Chip Sandwich: Packing in a Lot of Power.” The New York
Times. The New York Times, March 11, 1999.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/11/technology/what-s-next-ibm-s-chip-sandwich-
packing-in-a-lot-of-power.html. 

Mott, Vallerie. “Doping: Connectivity of Semiconductors.” Energy Bands in Solids. Lumen.

Accessed October 15, 2021.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introchem/chapter/doping-connectivity-of-
semiconductors/. 

“Photomask.” Semiconductor Engineering, October 2, 2020.

https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/manufacturing/lithography/
photomask/. 

Photomasks Explained (Contact and Projection): How to Etch Thin Chromium

Layers. YouTube. Huygen optics, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=foMT8gLYxBY. 

Sand to Silicon - the Making of a Chip. YouTube. Intel Newsroom, 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCOyq4YzBtY. 

“Silicon Wafer.” Wafer & Substrate Products| Semiconductor Wafer Inc. Semiconductor, Inc.
Accessed October 15, 2021. http://www.semiwafer.com/product.html. 

Witmann, R. “Semiconductor Doping Technology.” Miniaturization Problems in CMOS

Technology: Investigation of Doping Profiles and Reliability. IUE. Accessed October
15, 2021. https://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/wittmann/node7.html. 
Woodford, Chris. “How Do Transistors Work?” Silicon Sandwiches. Explain that Stuff,
September 21, 2020. https://www.explainthatstuff.com/howtransistorswork.html.