How are integrated circuits made

WHO INVENTED THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT?

Start here

1. Complete this description of how integrated circuits are made, using the correct form the verbs in the box.

involve create pack sound be start make

Inside a Chip Plant

How (1) …… we …………. something like a memory or processor chip for a computer? It all starts with a raw chemical element such as silicon, which is chemically treated or doped to make it have different electrical properties.

The process of making an integrated circuit (2) …………… off with a big single crystal of silicon, shaped like a long solid pipe, which is "salami sliced" into thin discs (about the dimensions of a compact disc) called wafers. The wafers are marked out into many identical square or rectangular areas, each of which will make up a single silicon chip (sometimes called a microchip). Thousands, millions, or billions of components are then created on each chip by doping different areas of the surface to turn them into n-type or p-type silicon. Doping is done by a variety of different processes. In one of them, known as sputtering, ions of the doping material are fired at the silicon wafer like bullets from a gun. Another process called vapor deposition (3) ……………. introducing the doping material as a gas and letting it condense so the impurity atoms (4) …………….a thin film on the surface of the silicon wafer. Molecular beam epitaxy (5) …………. a much more precise form of deposition.

Of course, making integrated circuits that (6) ………….. hundreds, millions, or billions of components onto a fingernail-sized chip of silicon is all a bit more complex and involved than it (7) ……………. Imagine the havoc even a speck of dirt could cause when you're working at the microscopic (or sometimes even the nanoscopic) scale. That's why semiconductors are made in spotless laboratory environments called clean rooms, where the air is meticulously filtered and workers have to pass in and out through airlocks wearing all kinds of protective clothing.

Vocabulary

2. Choose the correct spelling of the following words and give them definitions.

processor proccesor	maicrocheep microchip	treated trieted	dimantion dimension	surface serfice	spatering sputtering
epitaxy apetaxy	havoc hevok	spack speck	scale sceil	maticulos meticulous	airlock aerolock

Grammar

3. Study the sentences below and pay attention to the underlined verb forms in italics.

The ENIAC contained 18,000 buzzing electronic switches.

The ENIAC was thousands of times less powerful than a modern laptop.

Transistors used much less power, and were far more reliable.

Even after the invention of transistors, computers were still a tangled mass of wires.

Integrated circuits changed all that.

The invention of an integrated circuit made possible all modern microelectronic gadgets.

Answer the following questions:

10) What are these verb forms?

11) was, were. What verb has such forms?

12) contained, used, changed. What do these verb forms have in common?

13) used, made. What is different between these verb forms?

14) What tense are these verb forms in?

It is the Past Indefinite or Past Simple Tense.

4. How do we form sentences in the Past Indefinite? Complete the table.

Positive	Negative	Interrogative
Subject + Irregular Verb (II form). Subject + Regular Verb + ed	Subject + did + not + Verb.	Did+ Subject+Verb?
I taught English yesterday. You He studied yesterday. She It We They	I did not teach yesterday.   He did not study yesterday.	Did I teach yesterday?   Did he study yesterday?

5. So, now we can form the Past Indefinite. But when do we use the Past Indefinite? Study the following table and give your own examples.

Actions happened…	Examples
A completed action in the past. yesterday the other day the day before yesterday last week / month / year some weeks / months / years ago	· Three brilliant US physicists invented transistors at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in 1947. · The invention of an integrated circuit made possible all modern microelectronic gadgets. · It was an amazingly clever idea. · We had Chemistry last week.
A series of completed actions in the past.	· I finished work, walked to the beach, and found a nice place to swim. · He arrived from the airport at 8:00, checked into the hotel at 9:00, and met the others at 10:00. · Did you add flour, pour in the milk, and then add the eggs?
Duration in past for some weeks / months / years all day for some minutes / hours	· I lived in Brazil for two years. · Shauna studied Japanese for five years. · They sat at the beach all day. · They did not stay at the party the entire time. · We talked on the phone for thirty minutes. · How long did you wait for them? We waited for one hour.

Reading

6. Read the text about the inventors of an integrated circuit and find the sentences in the Past Indefinite Tense (Active Voice). Underline the Past Indefinite verb forms.

You've probably read in books that ICs were developed jointly by Jack Kilby(1923–2005) and Robert Noyce (1927–1990), as though these two men happily collaborated on their brilliant invention! In fact, Kilby and Noyce came up with the idea independently, at more or less exactly the same time, prompting a furious battle for the rights to the invention that was anything but happy.

How could two people invent the same thing at exactly the same time? Easy: integrated circuits were an idea waiting to happen. By the mid-1950s, the world (and the military, in particular) had discovered the amazing potential of electronic computers and it was blindingly apparent to visionaries like Kilby and Noyce that there needed to be a better way of building and connecting transistors in large quantities.

Kilby was working at Texas Instruments when he came upon the idea he called the monolithic principle: trying to build all the different parts of an electronic circuit on a silicon chip. On September 12, 1958, he hand-built the world's first, crude integrated circuit using a chip of germanium (a semiconducting element similar to silicon) and Texas Instruments applied for a patent on the idea the following year.

Meanwhile, at another company called Fairchild Semiconductor (formed by transistor pioneer William Shockley and a small group of associates), the equally brilliant Robert Noyce was experimenting with miniature circuits of his own. In 1959, he used a series of photographic and chemical techniques known as the planar process (which had just been developed by a colleague, Jean Hoerni) to produce the first, practical, integrated circuit, a method that Fairchild then tried to patent.

7. Read the text and make your own questions to it.

Although Kilby filed his patent first, Noyce's patent was granted earlier. Here are drawings from their original patent applications. You can see that we have essentially the same idea in both, with electronic components formed from junctions between layers of p-type (blue) and n-type (red) semiconductors. Connections to the p-type and n-type regions are shown in orange and yellow and the base layers (substrates) are shown in green.

Figure 4.4 Drawing from Kilby’s and Noyce’s original patent applications. Artworks courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office with added coloring to improve clarity and highlight the similarities.

There was considerable overlap between the two men's work and Texas Instruments and Fairchild battled in the courts for much of the 1960s over who had really developed the integrated circuit. Finally, in 1969, the companies agreed to share the idea.

8. Complete this description about Kilby and Noyce, using the correct form of the verbs in the box.

build on co-found note go on

 

Pay attention to the following verb forms: are regarded, developed, were inducted, was recognized, is remembered, is credited and incorporated.

Figure 4.3 Computer microchips like these – and all the appliances and gadgets that use them – owe their existence to Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy of US Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory (US DOE/NREL).

Kilby and Noyce are now rightly regarded as joint-inventors of arguably the most important and far-reaching technology developed in the 20th century. Both men were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (Kilby in 1982, Noyce the following year) and Kilby's breakthrough was also recognized with the award of a half-share in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 (as Kilby very generously (1) …………….. in his acceptance speech, Noyce would surely have shared in the prize too had he not died of a heart attack a decade earlier).

While Kilby is remembered as a brilliant scientist, Noyce's legacy has an added dimension. In 1968, he (2) …………………the Intel Electronics company with Gordon Moore (1929 –), which (3) ………….. to develop the microprocessor (single-chip computer) in 1974. With IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and other pioneering companies, Intel is credited with helping to bring affordable personal computers to our homes and workplaces. Thanks to Noyce and Kilby, and brilliant engineers who subsequently (4) …………….. their work, there are now something like two billion computers in use throughout the world, many of them incorporated into cellphones, portable satellite navigation devices, and other electronic gadgets.

Speaking

9. Work in pairs. Role play the characters of Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.

Review

10. Make these comparative tables, using the information from the previous Units 1-3.

Diode – Transistor
Similarity	Difference

 

Transistor – Integrated Circuit
Similarity	Difference