原创 探访应用材料梅坦技术中心，揭秘芯片制造（中）

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）：

Photomask光掩膜

The heart of chip manufacturing is lithography. It's like
silkscreening, except instead of squeegeeing ink through a silk
template onto a cotton T-shirt, you're shining ultraviolet light
through a glass photomask onto a silicon substrate coated with an
organic compound called photoresist.
芯片制造的核心技术是光刻，这种技术就像是丝网印刷，只不过不是通过丝制模板将墨滚压至棉T恤上，而是通过玻璃光掩膜，使紫外光照射表面涂有光刻胶的硅衬底上。
Where the UV light shines through, it chemically weakens the
photoresist, leaving a pattern on the surface of the silicon. Then
the wafer is sent through a chemical bath that etches trenches into
the exposed substrate, while leaving the areas covered by the
photoresist untouched.
在紫外光照射穿透的地方，光刻胶的化学特性会被削弱，使硅晶片表面留下图案。接着，硅晶片会被送入一个化学浴室，在暴露在外的硅衬底上蚀刻沟槽，同时光刻胶覆盖的区域不会受到任何影响。
After removing the photoresist, other machines can fill those
trenches with various materials, such as copper or aluminum, that
comprise the components of the processor.
在去除了光刻胶以后，其他设备会用各种材料填补沟槽，比如用于制造处理器零部件的铜或铝。
 
Shown here is a photomask, which bears the patterns that will be
printed onto a wafer. 此图显示的就是光掩膜，上面印有将打印到硅晶片上的图案。

Deposit, Etch, Repeat沉积、刻蚀，重复步骤

As a wafer is sent through the manufacturing facility, it can go
through as many as 250 different steps. These processes include
depositing films of various materials, then etching them to form
transistors and copper wiring.
随着硅晶片被送进制造车间，它将经过多达250个不同步骤的处理。这些步骤包括给各种材料覆上一层薄膜，接着蚀刻以制成晶体管和铜线。
 

On the right is one of Applied Materials' Endura machines. The
Endura platform is a modular, configurable system used to deposit
metals and metal alloys on the wafer. It has been used in the
manufacturing of almost every chip made in the past 20 years,
according to Applied.
右图是应用材料公司的Endura机器。Endura平台是一个模块化、可配置系统，用于将金属和金属合金安装到硅晶片。据应用材料公司的专家介绍，过去20年制
造的几乎所有芯片都用到了Endura平台。
On the left is an Applied Tetra III advanced reticle-etch system.
This system is used by virtually every maskmaker in the world for
the development and production of 45-nanometer masks.
Because it's developing and testing new manufacturing equipment, a
huge amount of Applied's expenditures go towards research. In 2009,
the company spent $934 million, or about 20 percent of its revenue,
on R&D. 左图则是应用材料公司Tetra
III先进掩膜刻蚀系统。世界各地所有的掩膜制造商都利用这套系统开发和生产直径为45纳米的掩膜。由于应用材料公司正在开发和测试新制造设备，该公司将
大量资金投入到科研领域。2009年，应用材料公司在研发方面的投入高达9.34亿美元，相当于年营收的20%左右。
The current state of the art for chip manufacturing is 30
nanometers, which means the average size of a chip component is
just 30 billionths of a meter across.
根据现阶段的技术发展水平制造的芯片直径是30纳米，也就是说，芯片零部件的平均尺寸大概是300亿分之一米。
Chip manufacturers are currently working on 22-nanometer designs,
which are even smaller.
Adding to the challenge is the fact that some of these features are
far deeper than they are wide -- in some cases, by a factor of 60
to 1. That means the etching systems have to be capable of creating
extremely deep and narrow trenches in silicon, at the nanometer
scale, with immense precision. 芯片制造商目前正在开发直径22
纳米的芯片设计，这会使得芯片零部件的尺寸更小。有些零部件的厚度远远超过宽度，有时，这一比例达到60：1，进一步增加了芯片制造的难度。因为这意味着蚀刻系统必须能以纳米刻度，以超高精度在芯片上刻下极深、极窄的沟槽。
 
The lithography room is lit with yellow light to avoid interference
with the UV light used with the
photomasks.平板印刷室里面点着黄色的灯，避免光掩膜与紫外线相互干扰。

Extreme Vacuum极端真空状态

 
A technician works on the touchscreen interface of an Endura
system. 技术人员在Endura系统的触摸屏界面上工作。
On the right is one of the large silver pumps used to create
extreme vacuums inside the machine -- as low as 10-12 atmospheres.
(By comparison, the air pressure at 200 kilometers [about 124
miles] above the Earth, where the Space Shuttle orbits, is about a
hundred times thicker, at about 10-10
atmospheres.)图左是大型银泵，用于在机器内产生极端真空状态——低至10-12个大气。相比之下，距地面124英里(约合200公里)的高空(航天飞机飞行轨道所在位置)的气压为10-10个大气。

No Metal Here “此处无金属”

 

The silver metal device on the right side of this Centura machine
is a batch loader, used to quickly depressurize a stack of wafers
prior to feeding them into the machine for processing.
Centura机器右侧的银色金属设备是一个斗式装载机(batch
loader)，用于快速给一叠硅晶片降压，然后将它们输送至Centura机器中加工。
The green "metal free tool" sign indicates that this machine is
used in a part of the process prior to the addition of copper
circuits. Copper is a contaminant that can mess up nonmetallic
stages of the manufacturing process, so the machines that add
copper need to be carefully segregated.
绿色“无金属工具”标识意味着，这台机器被用在增加铜线路以前的
一个过程。铜是一种污染物，会将加工过程的非金属阶段搞砸，所以，添加铜的机器需要进行小心隔离。