Semiconductors are silicon chips that conduct electricity in concrete and sophisticated ways, allowing them to be the brains of most devices that drive our modern lives. But despite the projections saying the semiconductor industry will hit the trillion-dollar mark by 2030, it's still facing many challenges. For instance, supply shortages have led to bottlenecks in the production of everything from cars to home appliances. The deficit shows how critical these tiny silicon chips are to the smooth functioning of the global economy. In this episode of Science with a Twist, our host Keith Cornell is joined by two subject matter experts from the semiconductor industry, Geoff Downing and Mark Mattison, to discuss the importance of semiconductors, the challenges the industry has been facing, and what the future holds for this technology.
⚡Semiconductor chips go through a long manufacturing process. It all depends on the type of chip, but the standard timeframe is between 120 days and nine months. It is a three-phase process that includes design and frontend and backend manufacturing, all dependent on various factors. ''These are global supply chains supporting the completed product. Semiconductor chips could be manufactured by a large fab, maybe most of it within the house, but there are diversified approaches too, where the chip is moving across the country to complete certain stages of manufacturing.''
⚡Some companies don't produce semiconductors in-house. The rationale behind such a decision lies in the need for a specific environment and certain conditions for making these chips. ''The fabs themselves are like huge low cities. All of this has to be clean room work. It needs to be done within one location generally. So because it's clean room work, you can't send that across until a critical step is completed in the manufacturing process. [...] If even a dust molecule were to land on any of these chips, the dust molecule's width is wide enough to block the passes of electrical current on the chip, thus making the chip ineffective," explains Geoff.
⚡We use a wide range of gases to prevent impurities from harming the chips. The most commonly used are helium, nitrogen, argon, and hydrogen. However, the gases used must be in perfect condition. And that's Mark's job. ''My experience is mostly with mass spectrometry, which is one of the best ways to analyze compounds like this. Specifically, an API-MS — an atmospheric pressure ionization mass spectrometer — has a simplified analysis of big bulk gases. For example, in the past 20 or 30 years, you could not analyze oxygen, if you could not get down low detection limits, analyze oxygen in bulk nitrogen. That used to be a lot more difficult with traditional techniques. But Thermo Fisher Scientific has put out some new analyzers with such a low detection limit there that we can accurately say we will get 10 to 15 parts per trillion in our gases that are being put through all these processes.''
[00:00:00] Mark Mattison: If you imagine a football field and you throw your credit card on that football field, that's about a part per million. You can visualize that. Like, if you're walking around that football field, you can see that credit card. So, now imagine that credit card, cut that credit card into a thousand tiny little pieces.
[00:00:15] Now, throw one of those tiny little pieces on that football field. That's a part per billion. Good luck finding it.
[00:00:21] Intro: Welcome to Science with a Twist, a podcast for curious people who enjoy exploring how science impacts our daily lives. From technology that helps the fight against COVID-19 to solutions that help clean the water we drink is all thanks to science. In each episode, members of Thermo Fisher Scientifics team talk to experts who are on the cutting edge of redefining how we exist.
[00:00:48] Let's get started.
[00:00:51] Keith Cornell: Hello and welcome back to Science with a Twist, a podcast brought to you by Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science. I'm Keith Cornell, a strategic marketer here at Thermo Fisher. I focus on our gas analysis solutions with a focus on the semiconductor industry. So, what are semiconductors?
[00:01:10] Well, Semiconductors are silicon chips that conduct electricity in very specific and sophisticated ways that allows them to be the brains of most of the devices that drive our modern lives.
[00:01:22] Think about how often you use electronic devices throughout your day. Your cell phone, your car, radios, if you're into that kind of thing, TVs, even lifesaving medical devices and military equipment, they all rely on semiconductors to function. Though the semiconductor industry is projected to become a trillion-dollar industry by the year 2030, the industry has faced some challenges recently. Supply shortages have led to bottlenecks in the production of everything from cars to home appliances, and the shortage shows how critical these tiny silicon chips are to the smooth functioning of the global economy. So, for this episode, I'm joined by two subject matter experts from the semiconductor industry. First, we have Geoff Downing, an, an industry insider, also a business development manager from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Mark Mattison, Quality Assurance lab supervisor from Entegris, and by the way, an analytical chemist by trade. They'll help us wrap our heads around the importance of semiconductors, the challenges the industry has been facing and what's next for this critical technology.
[00:02:30] So, Geoff, Mark, welcome to Science with a Twist. How's it going?
[00:02:34] Geoff Downing: It's going great. Thanks. Happy to be here.
[00:02:37] Mark Mattison: Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:38] Keith Cornell: Wonderful, wonderful. So, as I mentioned, semiconductors are found in many devices that we use in our everyday lives, but I think it's helpful to give our listeners a clear understanding of how important these chips are. So, I'll start with you, Geoff. Firstly, you're an insider. What makes you an insider?
[00:02:55] Just briefly.
[00:02:57] Geoff Downing: Okay, well, I'm part of the semi-organization, which is an advocacy group. I'm part of the Global Automotive Advisory Council for them. So, I'm pretty plugged into the supply chain issues been going on, especially with the automotive industry. I'm also a member of the GEC or Executive Smart Manufacturing Committee.
[00:03:15] And basically, what we're working on together is, establishing the fab pool .0. I'm pretty well plugged into the latest trends and latest challenges really with industry.
[00:03:27] Keith Cornell: Trends are moving fast. Before we get into the future, help bring us up to the, the present. How important are semiconductors to everyday life and how have they evolved throughout time?
[00:03:38] Geoff Downing: Well, some detector chips are very important for everyday life. A lot of people just don't realize how integrated we are with these latest chips. Like, for example, there's Internet of Things movement that's been going on, you know, while maybe you don't care too much about your smart spatula, right?
[00:03:55] Being able to have the latest and greatest chip, you definitely care if your pacemaker or car with early collision technology had the latest and greatest chip in it. And that's really the, been the progressive progress with the Moore's Law in the semiconductor industry. So, we've kind of moved beyond, more is more, we're still moving into other areas and getting down to the
[00:04:17] technological nodes and pushing the limits of current manufacturing capabilities is where the industry is right now. For example, the wiring on a semiconductor chip right now is 500 times smaller than a human hair. We're basically manufacturing at the smallest scale that you can be manufacturing at right now, smaller than bacteria and viruses.
[00:04:40] Keith Cornell: Got it. You mentioned Moore's Law. Can you help me understand what that is?
[00:04:45] Geoff Downing: Yeah, basically, Moore's Law is based on the idea that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years, and that's kind of been the momentum behind the increases in the technology, but there's been other trends within the industry to help propel that forward and right now
[00:05:04] we're manufacturing at, you know, most likely cars manufactured at the 30-nanometer scale, maybe 25 nanometers. And then, you know, your standard computer chips, they're cutting-edge. Ones are gonna be manufactured at 7 nanometers, maybe even 5. We're pushing way beyond that, and right now, we're looking at, you know, R&D and manufacturing at-scale eventually of nanometer or two-nanometer chips.
[00:05:29] Keith Cornell: Wow. So, what it sounds like to me is that chips are doing more, but they're getting smaller and even more powerful. Am I understanding that right?
[00:05:39] Geoff Downing: That's correct.
[00:05:41] Keith Cornell: That is science, but with a twist. That's, that's interesting stuff. And what's driving all, all this growth? You mentioned Internet of Things, you mentioned critical operations, like, you know, pacemakers, you mentioned smart spatula, which I didn't know exists.
[00:05:57] I wish you, wish you can do an entire episode on that, but, perhaps I'll purchase one once the price comes down, but, like, a trillion dollars, which industries are, are asking for semiconductors?
[00:06:09] Geoff Downing: Right now, there are several big drivers with the industry, automotive being a huge one. Over 50% of the total cost of automotive is due to the semiconductor chips technology within it. Teslas are practically completely driven by semiconductor chips because, you know, as we move from combustion engines to battery-powered cars, it's gonna be completely controlled by semiconductor chips, especially the onboard systems on these cars have to be on the cutting edge, you know, especially with the imagery detection technology on it, the battery management systems and all the applications.
[00:06:43] It's only gonna improve and grow. Another really big driver of the industry is AI, of course, and cutting-edge computers. So, you know, supercomputers, things are gonna be tackling some of the biggest issues facing basically the humanity right now is going to be
[00:07:00] Geoff Downing: you know, powered by the latest semiconductor technology.
[00:07:04] Keith Cornell: Wow. Yeah. One of my bosses here, she had mentioned to me that it took her, like, 3 months. She ordered a refrigerator, a pretty nice one, and it took, like, 3 months for it to be, for her to get it, just because of the shortage, behind that shortage were semiconductors. So, it's pretty interesting stuff.
[00:07:21] So, we know semiconductors are, they're important. They drive modern life, but how are they made?
[00:07:28] Geoff Downing: Semiconductor chips go through a very long manufacturing process. Anywhere between 120 days to maybe up to 9 months, depending on what type of chip you're discussing and the supply chain, it's, it's supported by, and these are global supply chains supporting the completed product. So, you know, semiconductor chips could be manufactured by a, you know, a large fab, maybe most of it within house, but they're also diversified approaches too, where the chip is actually moving across countries
[00:07:59] to complete certain stages it's manufacturing. Generally, there's 3 phases to any manufacturing, assuming Dr. Chip, it's design, which is primarily dominated by the US in terms of over 50% of the market is done in the US, then there's front-end manufacturing. These are done within the big facilities and fabs that you hear about most often.
[00:08:19] Geoff Downing: And then you have back-end, which is considered packaging.
[00:08:23] Keith Cornell: I heard that, for example, like, Apple designs their own chips, but they don't necessarily make them, do they?
[00:08:31] Geoff Downing: There are some large names in the semiconductor industry that outsource the actual manufacturing, the front-end of this, and part of that is simply because the fabs themselves are, like, huge low cities. All of this has to be is clean-room work. It needs to be done within one location generally because it's clean-room work, you can't really send that across until a critical step is completed
[00:08:54] in the manufacturing process. There's usually over 150 different steps within manufacturing a semiconductor chip, and it cannot be exposed to atmosphere, there are special wafer movement systems within all these different fabs that carry it across floors and, and chamber, so that way it protects it from the, the local atmosphere.
[00:09:13] In fact, the environment of the semiconductor fab is so well controlled that it's 500 times more clean than a surgical operating room.
[00:09:20] Keith Cornell: Wow. Yeah. And you mentioned clean room, and in my head, I'm just thinking about the suits where they make sure, like, no matter gets into the environment. What can possibly happen if impurities aren't introduced to the, to the process?
[00:09:33] Geoff Downing: If impurities were to interact with the wafer or the dyes during the manufacturing process, a few things can happen, but definitely will always lead to a failure of the chip. And basically, what will happen is that if even a dust molecule were to land on any of these chips, the dust molecule's width is wide enough to block passes of electrical current on the chip, thus making the chip ineffective and inoperable.
[00:10:04] Keith Cornell: Wow. So, that could be, that could have tremendous impact on daily life when, you know, whether it comes to consumer, electronics, and appliances or medical equipment, as mentioned earlier. So, now, now, now we're getting closer to my wheelhouse, a little bit of gas analysis, but I understand that a bunch of chemicals and gases are introduced into the process so that a semiconductor can be made.
[00:10:28] Can you give like a, just a couple of examples?
[00:10:30] Geoff Downing: Sure. Yeah. So, semiconductor uses a wide range of gases and especially on what type of process we're discussing. P, C, V, D, X, there's so many, but I would say that the most common used gases within semiconductor are helium, nitrogen, argon and hydrogen. These are the most like widely used across all these processes.
[00:10:52] Mark, you're the chemist in the room, so help us understand, one, how is it that you work with these gases? In other words, what is your role in your laboratory, and how do you even test to see even the smallest amount of impurities in these gasses?
[00:11:09] My job is to monitor the purity of the gases that we use at our owned factory here and the, the gases that, that are used in the industry are, they're used to either create or promote the, the chemical reactions that are needed to kind of shape the electrical properties of the semiconductor chip.
[00:11:26] Mark Mattison: A big one Geoff mentioned was nitrogen, nitrogen's a very, very common gas use in the semiconductor industry, and one of the prime uses for it is as a flush to clean, it is used to like purge and clean stuff off of the chip surface and whatnot. And so, just like Geoff was saying, if there's a single speck of dust in there, that can completely obliterate the entire chip, which costs millions of dollars and lots of resources, and it's not a good situation.
[00:11:51] So, if you're going to be purging off your semiconductor chip with nitrogen, you wanna make sure that that is clean because you're using the nitrogen to remove all the contaminants in there. So, if your nitrogen has some oxygen in it, some carbon monoxide, like, these are reactive molecules that are gonna go cause problems, and you're, it's, it's a good way to have impure gases
[00:12:10] Mark Mattison: running through your systems and using them is a really good way to set yourself up for a high-value failure. So, it is one of the pivotal events in any semiconductor manufacturing is ensuring that your materials are pure.
[00:12:22] Keith Cornell: Got it, yeah, and I could, I could see how a tremendous problem can be caused if the, you, for instance, you use nitrogen to clean parts of the process. If the thing that you use to clean is not clean, then that could cause tons of trouble. So, I guess I can't imagine that the amount of impurity is in, within the gas is up very large. How do you get down to measuring those tiny, tiny amounts? Like, what is the chemistry in it? Is there a certain technology that you prefer?
[00:12:54] My experience is mostly with mass spectrometry, which is one of the best ways to analyze compounds like this, specifically the, an API MS, an atmospheric pressure ionization, mass spectrometer has really simplified analysis of big bulk gases like this.
[00:13:10] Mark Mattison: Traditionally, in the past 20, 30 years ago, you could not analyze oxygen or, you know, if you could not get down really low detection limits, analyzing oxygen in bulk nitrogen, that used to be a lot more difficult with traditional techniques. But, in fact, Thermo Fisher Scientific has put out some new analyzers that have such a low detection limit there that we can accurately say we will get 10 to 15 parts per trillion in our gases that are being put through all these processes, which, that's essentially an unfathomable number.
[00:13:41] Like, I have a couple examples of that. Like a, a part per million. If you imagine a football field and you throw your credit card on that football field, that's about a part per million. You can visualize that. Like, if you're walking around that football field, you can see that credit card, right? It's kind of one of those things.
[00:13:57] You think of a part per million as this huge number, but it's actually pretty to see that, but then we're getting down to the parts-per-billion, parts-per-trillion level. So, now imagine that credit card, cut that credit card into a thousand tiny little pieces. That's gonna be even an almost invisible piece of that credit card.
[00:14:15] Now, throw one of those tiny little pieces on that football field. That's a part per billion. Good luck finding it. Another real good example of that is I am 32 years old, 32 years is almost exactly 1 billion seconds. So, one second in my life so far is a part per billion. That's the level that most of them participate at nowadays, and we can even get lower and lower and lower to the part-per-trillion level and the part per trillion
[00:14:40] in, in my eyes, in my experience, that's 1000th of that, 1000th of that credit card on that football field. That is all but unfathomable. That is really hard to visualize 'cause you can't even see the little speck you're trying to put on that football field. So, again, that's just, it's an unfathomably small number
[00:14:57] and that's where the technology has evolved. We know we can now ionize the bulk gases, charge all that bulk nitrogen and get it, get it ionized, and it'll start bumping into the little tiny impurities in there and start ionizing them as a much more efficient way to measure such really small levels in a bulk gas like that.
[00:15:17] Keith Cornell: That's interesting. And when I think about innovation like that, I think about how the folks who use the API mass spectrometry, the advancements that they must be going to. So, in this case, that would be the semiconductor industry. Are they demanding more purity from their gases and chemicals that they're putting into the process for industry?
[00:15:39] Geoff Downing: Exactly. Like we touched on before, industry's progressively getting more and more sophisticated because it has to, it's being driven that way through capabilities, and they always have to be expanding these capabilities. The thing is, is that as those capabilities expand, the manufacturing demands also continually get more narrow on their process windows.
[00:16:02] So, for example, what might be acceptable for, you know, 10 years ago or 5 years ago, car manufacturing ship manufactured at 30 nanometers, it's not fathomable to even use that same manufacturing process to manufacture the next generation of chips. You're gonna have to get more narrow and more specific, and you have to exercise increased control over the environment and the atmosphere that is being controlled to generate these in technology.
[00:16:31] Like we discussed, and, you know, like Mark said, if any residual gas is left within the chamber, it reacts and then interferes with any one of the chips that dies on the wafer, it's critically important because you have to understand that in each one of these processes, there's multiple gas recipes being run.
[00:16:53] So, as Mark noted, just rightfully is that nitrogen is used as a, a purge gas to purge the previous gas, gas recipe out of the chamber completely, and then you start a, begin a new gas chamber process, you know, with a new cocktail of gases, you know, that you have to through, you know, x or doping or whatever it is you're trying to accomplish with the chip to enhance its capabilities and its material properties.
[00:17:16] And again, if any one of these processes go wrong, it, you're losing not only the time spent on that ship but all the materials on that ship and all the man hours spent on that ship. The cost of scrap within these manufacturing steps is very quickly astronomical. The deeper you go into how long you've already spent on sunk cost of manufacturing this chip.
[00:17:44] Geoff Downing: So, to mitigate those losses through scrap and to enhance the yield within these manufacturing sites, they have to continually narrow their specs. And the only way to really do that is through the latest and greatest technologies of manufacturing equipment. This is why these fabs, you know, their facilities, they can't really reuse, the cutting-edge facilities, can't really reuse old equipment.
[00:18:09] They have to continually purchase the latest and greatest in order to push the boundaries of their R&D to push the latest production lines that are gonna lead the future.
[00:18:17] Keith Cornell: Wow. That, that, that's, that's interesting stuff. So, just to, just to close with you all, thank you so much for your time. I've had tons of fun talking with Geoff and Mark about semiconductors, the fabs and factories that are made in, and also the blazing speed of innovation in the industry. So, Geoff, Mark, thank you very much. Thank you for joining Science with The Twist, the podcast from Thermo Fisher Scientific.
[00:18:42] Geoff Downing: Thank you for having us.
[00:18:43] Mark Mattison: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
[00:18:44] Outro: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Science with a Twist. This show is brought to you by Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science. If you enjoyed this episode, then follow Science with a Twist wherever you get your favorite podcast.