原创 探访应用材料梅坦技术中心，揭秘芯片制造(上)

美国《WIRED》杂志2010年10月19日题为 《A Chip Is Born: Inside a State-of-the-Art
Clean Room》的文章。杂志记者去到全球最大的半导体设备制造商应用材料公司（Applied
Materials）的梅坦技术中心（Maydan Technology
Center）进行了参观，探访设在那里技术一流的无尘室，揭秘芯片诞生的全过程。

以下是中文对照（由于本人英文不佳，如有翻译错误，请指正）：

If you wish to compose an e-mail, index a database of web pages,
stream a kitten video in 720p or render an explosion at 60 frames
per second, you must first build a computer.
如果你希望写一封电子邮件，给网页数据库建索引，使用720p的视频流或以每秒60帧的频率呈现爆炸画面，你必须首先制造一台电脑。
And to build a computer, you must first design and fabricate the
tiny processors that rapidly churn through the millions of discrete
computational steps behind every one of those digital actions,
taking a new step approximately 3 billion times per second.
而要制造电脑，你首先得设计和制造微型处理器，快速处理完成上述每个数字动作的数百万个不同的计算步骤，进而采取运算速度达每秒30亿次左右的新步骤。
To do all this, you are probably going to need chip-manufacturing
machines from Applied Materials, one of the main suppliers of such
equipment to the semiconductor industry.
要做到这一点，你可能需要应用材料公司生产的芯片制造工具。

Applied's
machines subject silicon wafers (such as the Intel wafer
shown below) to incredibly intense vacuums, caustic chemical baths,
high-energy plasmas, intense ultraviolet light, and more, taking
the wafers through the hundreds of discrete manufacturing steps
required to turn them into CPUs, memory chips and graphics
processors.应用材料公司是世界上向半导体行业出售这种设备的主要厂商之一。应用材料公司的机器设备会令硅晶片(如上图中所展示的英特尔硅晶
片)遭受超强真空处理、“化学浴”浸泡、高能等离子体加工、紫外光照射等一系列步骤，同时还要使硅晶片经过数百个制造阶段，从而将它们变成CPU、存
储器片、图形处理器等。
Because those processes aren't exactly friendly to
humans, much of
this work happens inside sealed chambers where robot arms move the
wafers from one processing station to another. The machines
themselves are housed within clean rooms whose scrubbed air (and
bunny-suited employees) keep the risk of aerial contamination low:
A single dust particle from your hair is all it takes to ruin a CPU
that might sell for $500, so companies are eager to minimize how
often that happens.
由于上述步骤不利于人体健康，所以，部分操作步骤必须在密封的真空室内进行，需要机械臂将硅晶片从一个处理站移到另一个处理站。而机器本身放置在无尘室
内。无尘室的纯净气体和身穿防护服的技术人员可以降低空气受污染的几率：头发上掉下的一个尘粒便能毁坏售价500美元的CPU，所以，公司希望将发生这种
事件的几率降至最低。
Wired/com recently toured Applied Materials' Maydan Technology
Center, a state-of-the-art clean room in Santa Clara, California,
where Applied develops and tests its machines.
《连线》记者日前造访了应用材料公司的梅坦技术中心。梅坦技术中心是位于加州圣克拉拉市的技术一流的无尘室，应用材料公司在那里开发和测试设备。
Its 39,000 square feet of ultraclean workspace equals about 81
yards of a football field, and is divided into three huge
"ballrooms," each of which is crammed full of Applied's
multimillion-dollar machines, alongside pipes, tubes, spare parts,
tanks of caustic chemicals, Craftsman tool chests and huge racks of
silicon
wafers.整个技术中心的超净工作区占地面积3.9万平方英尺，相当于81个橄榄球场，分成三个大型“舞厅”，每个都摆满了应用材料公司价值数百万美元的设备以及软管、零部件、腐蚀性化学物箱子、工具箱和一堆堆的硅晶片。

To get inside, you must suit up in a bunny suit, with a face mask
and goggles, two pairs of gloves, and shoe-covering footies. We
couldn't even take a reporter's notebook inside: Instead, Applied's
staff gave us a shrink-wrapped, specially sanitized clean-room
notebook and clean-room pen to use.
在进入梅坦技术中心以前，你必须穿上防护服，戴上面具、护目镜、两幅手套以及将鞋完全套住的塑料袋。记者甚至不能将笔记本带入内：相反，应用材料公司给了他们几个用收缩膜包装的、在无尘室经过特殊消毒处理的笔记本和钢笔使用。
It's not a manufacturing facility. Instead, this clean room
simulates the fabs where Applied's machines will be used, enabling
the company (and its customers) to test out new techniques and
processes before putting them on the production line. As such, it
provides a rare glimpse inside the world of cutting-edge
semiconductor manufacturing.
这里不是生产车间，相反，这个无尘室只是模拟了晶圆厂的环境，应用材料公司的设备将在这种环境下使用，以便公司及其客户可以测试新技术和新工艺，然后真正将它们推向生产线。