There is a lot of interesting tech that goes into IC manufacturing, part of EE school was going through the design of a simple IC all the way to manufacturing which involved visiting National Semiconductor and having them fab it.
One of the things I found most interesting is that large sections of the manufacturing sections of the building sit on isolated vibration controlled platforms and there are 'Earthquake" sensors all over the place that can shutdown the plant if too much movement is detected. You can imagine that any vibration causes issues at such small scales. Some of the control platforms/benches are active, meaning they sense any vibration and counteract it using various kinds of actuators.
There are also a lot of really nasty chemicals that go into this. When they say 'Etch' they really mean 'melt it away with a really strong acid'. The materials used for donor doping, usually phosphorous or arsenic are really quite toxic chemicals not helped by the fact that these are often used in gaseous form for implantation and are colorless/oderless. The acceptor dopants are at least pretty harmless most of the time (gallium or boron). Many types of photoresist can also be really dangerous from a safety standpoint. Its pretty impressive that semiconductor plants operate as safely as do, choked up primarily to heavy automation.
One of the things I found most interesting is that large sections of the manufacturing sections of the building sit on isolated vibration controlled platforms and there are 'Earthquake" sensors all over the place that can shutdown the plant if too much movement is detected. You can imagine that any vibration causes issues at such small scales. Some of the control platforms/benches are active, meaning they sense any vibration and counteract it using various kinds of actuators.
There are also a lot of really nasty chemicals that go into this. When they say 'Etch' they really mean 'melt it away with a really strong acid'. The materials used for donor doping, usually phosphorous or arsenic are really quite toxic chemicals not helped by the fact that these are often used in gaseous form for implantation and are colorless/oderless. The acceptor dopants are at least pretty harmless most of the time (gallium or boron). Many types of photoresist can also be really dangerous from a safety standpoint. Its pretty impressive that semiconductor plants operate as safely as do, choked up primarily to heavy automation.