The Lithography and Etch Process in the Microelectronics Industry

The microelectronics industry produces integrated electronic circuits on small pieces of silicon – “Chips”. In a Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits there are a few millions transistors on a single chip. The transistors are wired up by a few layers of metal lines (or other conductive materials). Between the transis­tor layer and the wiring layers there are layers of insu­lating material (usually silicon oxide). Hence, the chip can be described as a multi layer stack. The first layer in this stack is the transistor layer. On top of this layer there are wiring layers with insulating layers between them.