Classification of Integrated Circuits

An integrated circuit (IC) consists of several interconnected transistors, resistors, capacitors etc., all contained in one small package with external connecting terminals. The circuit may be entirely self-contained, requiring only input and output connections and supply voltage to function. Alternatively, a few external components may have to be connected to make the circuit operative. On the basis of fabrication techniques used, the ICs can be divided into following three classes.

Monolithic ICs

Monolithic IC Plastic Package The word monolithic is derived from the Greek monos, meaning single and lithos, meaning stone.Thus monolithic circuit is built into a single stone or single crystal i.e. in monolithic ICs, all circuit components, (both active and passive) and their interconnections are formed into or on the top of a single chip of silicon. This type of technology is ideal for manufacturing identical ICs in large quantities and, therefore, provides lowest per unit cost and highest order of reliability. Monolithic ICs are by far the most common type of ICs used in practice, because of mass production , lower cost and higher reliability.

Monolithic IC Since their invention, manufacturers have been manufacturing monolithic ICs to carry out all types of functions. Commercially available ICs of this type can be used as amplifiers, voltage regulators, crowbars, AM receivers, TV circuits, and computer circuits. However, the monolithic circuits have the following limitations or drawbacks: Low power rating. Since monolithic ICs are of about the size of a discrete small-signal transistor, they typically have a maximum power rating of less than 1 watt. This limits their use to low-power applications. Poorer isolation between components. No possibility of fabrication of inductors. Small range of values of passive components used in the ICs. Lack of flexibility in circuit design as for making any variation in the circuit, a new set of masks is required.

Thin and Thick Film ICs.

Thick and Thin Film IC These devices are larger than monolithic ICs but smaller than discrete circuits. These ICs can be used when power requirement is comparatively higher. With a thin-or thick-film IC, the passive components like resistors and capacitors are integrated, but the transistors and diodes are connected as discrete components to form a complete circuit. Therefore, commercially available thin- and thick-film circuits are combination of integrated and discrete components. The essential difference between the thin- and thick-film ICs is not their relative thickness but the method of deposition of film. Both have similar appearance, properties and general characteristics.
Thin-film ICs

They are fabricated by depositing films of conducting material on the surface of a glass or ceramic base. By controlling the width and thickness of the films, and by using different materials selected for their resistivity, resistors and conductors are fabricated. Capacitors are produced by sandwiching a film of insulating oxide between two conducting films. Inductors are made by depositing a spiral formation of film. Transistors and diodes can be produced by thinfilm technology; but usually tiny discrete components are connected into the circuit. One method used for producing thin films is vacuum evaporation in which vaporized material is deposited on a substrate contained in a vacuum. In another method, called cathode sputtering, atoms from a cathode made of the desired film material are deposited on a substrate located between a cathode and an anode.
Thick-film ICs

They are sometimes referred to as printed thin-film circuits. In their manu-facturing process silkscreen printing techniques are used to create the desired circuit pattern on a ceramic substrate. The screens are actually made of fine stainless steel wire mesh, and the inks are pastes having conductive, resistive, or dielectric properties. After printing, the circuits are high temperaturefired in a furnace to fuse the films to the substrate. Thick-film passive components are fabricated in the same way as those in thin-film circuits. As with thin-film circuits, active components are added as separate devices. A portion of thick-film circuit is given in figure. ICs produced by thin-or thick film techniques have the advantages of forming passive components with wider range and better tolerances, better isolation between their components, greater flexibility in circuit design and of providing better high-frequency performance than monolithic ICs. However, such ICs suffer from the drawbacks of larger physical size, comparatively higher cost and incapability of fabrication of active components.

Hybrid or Multi-chip ICs.

Hybrid Multichip IC
As the name implies, the circuit is fabricated by interconnecting a number of individual chips. The active components are diffused transistors or diodes. The passive components may be group of diffused resistors or capacitors on a single chip, or they may be thin-film components. Wiring or a metalized pattern provides con-nections between chips. Hybrids ICs are widely used for high power audio amplifier appli-cations from 5 W to more than 50 W. The structure of a hybrid or multi-chip IC is shown in figure. Like thin- and thick-film ICs, hybrid ICs usually have better performance than monolithic ICs. Although the process is too expensive for mass production, multi-chip techniques are quite economical for small quantity production and are more often used as prototypes for monolithic ICs. Based upon the active devices employed the ICs can be classified as bipolar ICs using bipolar active devices (BJT) and unipolar ICs using unipolar active devices like FET. ICs can also be classified on the basis of their chip size as given below : 1. Small scale integration (SSI)3 to 30 gates/chip. 2. Medium scale integration (MSI)30 to 300 gates/chip. 3. Large scale integration (LSI)300 to 3,000 gates/chip. 4. Very large scale integration (VLSI)more than 3,000 gates/chip.

Production Process of Monolithic ICs

A monolithic IC is one in which all circuit components and their inter-connections are formed on a single thin wafer, called the substrate. The basic production processes for the monolithic ICs are given below :

Monolithic IC Manufacturing Process

1. P-Substrate.
As already mentioned in the previous article, it is the bottom most layer that serves as the body or substrate upon which the complete IC is built. A typical P-type crystal is grown in dimensions of 250 mm length and 25 mm diameter, as shown in figure. Silicon is preferred because its characteristics are more suitable for manufacture of ICs. The crystal is then cut by a diamond saw into thin slices called wafers. These wafers after being lapped and polished to mirror finish serve as the base or substrate on which hundreds of ICs are produced. The enlarged view of circular wafer is shown in figure. The wafer may also be rectangular in shape as shown in figure.

Manufaturing-Monolithic IC

2. Epitaxial Growth.
On the high resistivity P-type substrate a low resistivity 25 a m thick layer of N-type is epitaxially grown. For this purpose, the wafers are placed in a diffusion furnace at 1,200 C and a gas mixture of silicon atoms and pentavalent atoms is passed over the wafers. This forms a thin layer of N- type semiconductor on the heated surface of the substrate, as shown in figure. It is this expitaxial layer that all active and passive components of an IC are formed. This layer ultimately becomes the collector for a transistor or an element for a diode or a capacitor. The resistivity of P-type substrate for NA = 1.4 x 1021 atoms/m3 is typically 10 ohm-cm. The resistivity of N-type epitaxial layer is suitably chosen in the range of (0.1 0.5) ohm-cm. This layer is finally polished and cleaned.

Monolithic IC-Manufacturing

3. Insulation Layer.

In order to prevent the contamination of the epitaxial layer, a thin layer of Si02 is formed over the entire surface, as illustrated in figure. The Si Monolayer is grown by exposing the epitaxial layer to an oxygen atmosphere to about 1,000 C. This surface layer of Si02 will prevent any impurities from enter-ing4he N-type epitaxial layer. However, selective etching of this layer will permit the diffusion of the proper impurity into designed areas of the N-type epitaxial region of the silicon wafer.

Photolithographic Process-Monolithic IC

4. Photolithographic Process.
The monolithic technique requires the selective removal of the silicon-dioxide (SiO2) to form openings through which impurities may be diffused, if required. The photolithographic process shown in figure. is used for this purpose. During the process the wafer is coated with a thin layer of photo-sensitive material, commonly known as photo-resist (such as Kodak photoresist KPR). A large black and white layout of the desired pattern of openings or windows is made and then reduced photographically. This negative, or stencil, of the required dimensions is placed as a mask over the photo- resist, as illustrated in figure.This wafer surface with mask is then exposed to the ultraviolet light. Due to ultraviolet light, the photoresist below the transparent portions of the mask becomes polymerised. The mask is now removed, and the wafer is developed by using a chemical like trichlorolethylene. The chemical dissolves the unpolymerised portions of the photoresist film and leaves the surface as shown in figure. The oxide not covered by polymerised photoresist is then removed by immersing the chip in an etching solution of HCl. Those portions of the Si02 which are protected by the photoresist remain unaffected by the acid. After etching and diffusion of impurities, the resist mask is stripped off with a chemical solvent like hot sulphuric acid (H2 S04) and by means of a mechanical abrasion process. The appropriate impurities are then diffused through oxide free windows.

Monolithic IC Manufacturing

5. Isolation Diffusion.
Si02 layer is removed from the desired areas (four selected portions from the wafer, as illustrated in fig. using photolithographic etching process explained above. The remaining Si02 layer serves as mask for the diffusion of acceptor impurities. The wafer is now subjected to isolation diffusion at a suitably high temperature and for appropriate time period allowing P-type impurity (boron in this case) to penetrate into the N-type epitaxial layer through the openings in Si02 layer and ultimately reach the P-type substrate. The temperature and time period of diffusion are required to be carefully controlled. The process results in formation of N-type regions, called the isolation islands. The name is given as they are separated by back-to-back P-N junctions. Their purpose is to permit electrical isolation between various components of IC. Each electrical element is later on formed in a separate isolation island. The bottom of the N-type isolation island ultimately forms the collector of an N-P-N transistor. The P-type substrate, is always kept negative with respect to the isolation islands and provided with reverse bias at P-N junctions. If P-N junctions are forward biased, the isolation will get lost. Isolation diffusion is controlled so as to cause high acceptor concentration P+ (typically NA = 5 x 1026 atoms/m3) in the region between the isolation islands. This concentration is much higher than that of P-type substrate. This is for preventing the depletion region of the reverse-biased isolation island-to-substrate junction from extending into P+ region and from possibly connecting two adjacent isolation islands. Two adjoining isolation islands are connected to the P-type substrate by a barrier capacitance or transition capacitance. This is undesirable and is called the parasitic Capacitance. It adversely affects the performance of the IC and puts a limitation on its use. The parasitic capacitance has two components; the capacitance C1 from the bottom of the re type region to the substrate and capacitance C2 from the sidewalls of the isolation islands to the P-region. The bottom component Ct is essentially due to step junction formed by ! epitaxial growth and, therefore, varies as the square root of the voltage V between the isolation region and substrate (i.e. C1 is directly proportional to V). The sidewall capacitance C2 is associated with a diffused graded junction and so varies as V-1/2. The total capacitance is of the order of a few p F.

Monolithic IC Production 6. Base Diffusion. During this process a new layer of Si02 is formed over the wafer. The new pattern of openings is created depending upon the circuit needs. In these openings P-type impurities like boron are diffused under regulated environments to form P-regions. This forms the base region of an N-P-N transistor or as well as resistors, the anode of diode, and junction capacitor. In this case, the diffusion time is so controlled that the P-type impurities do not reach the substrate. The resistivity of the base layer is usually much higher than that of the isolation regions.

Monolithic IC construction 7. Emitter Diffusion. A layer of Si02 is again formed over the entire surface and openings in the P-type regions, as shown figure, are formed again by employing masking and etching processes. The N-type impurities like phosphorous are then diffused through these windows under controlled environments to form the transistor emitters, the cathode regions for diodes, and junction capacitors. Additional windows (such as Wj and W2 in figure) are usually made into the N-regions to permit aluminium metallic connections.

Monolithic IC Manufacturing

8. Aluminium Metalization.
For making electrical connection between various components of the IC, several windows are opened on a newly created Si02 layer. Now a thin layer of aluminium is deposited on the entire top surface. Further, photoresist technique is used to etch away all the unwanted aluminium areas. The structure then provides the connected strips to which leads are attached, as illustrated in figures represents the complete IC layout of the circuit shown in figure.

9. Scribing and Mounting.

In practice, a large number (several hundreds) of identical ICs are manufactured simultaneously on a silicon wafer. After the completion of the metallization process, the wafer is scribed with a diamond-tipped tool and separated into individual chips. Each chip is then mounted on a ceramic wafer and is attached to a suitable header. Next the package leads are connected to the IC chip by stich bonding of 25 micron aluminium or , gold wire from the terminal pad on the IC chip to the package lead.