Re: fabrication of wafer (computer chips) ... "fabrication"?

On Sat, 6/20/2026 10:36 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
> 
> Why is the manufacturing of computer chips also called "fabrication"?
> 
> Is it a dirty ulgy little tick to joke about the legal meaning of "fabrication"?
> 
> FABRICATION in Traditional Chinese - Cambridge Dictionary
> <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/fabrication>
> 
> * the act of producing a product, especially in
>   an industrial process
> 
> * the act of inventing false information in order
>   to deceive someone, or the false information itself

It takes *12 weeks* to make one of those.

If there is an earthquake while the process is running,
then 12 weeks worth of product can go into the garbage.
A wafer boat which is in transit in a robotic carrier,
that could be saved. And if one wafer is worth $10K-$20K,
and there are a dozen wafers in the carrier, that's worth
saving. The automation knows what steps the wafer has been
through. A lot of the machines, will have high vacuum inside
them while the process step runs (all the room air has to be
purged inside a machine, before a process step starts).

But if a wafer was in a sputtering machine, or some sort of
doping process was being carried out, and there was an earthquake,
the wafer is most likely spoiled and cannot be trusted by
"just doing half a doping process". The process steps are
considered un-stoppable, because you would not be delivering
a precise reproduction of the behavior of the machines, if
you stopped and started them again.

The material is deposited in layers. It's just like building a house.

The fab building is vibration-isolated. Ours had "bags" of some sort
underneath the building. And what those would suppress, was vibration
from passing traffic. You couldn't feel any vibration in the
building. I think someone had to go underneath the building and
check on those, once in a while. The building was far enough from
a local stream, that flooding did not make its way to the
building foundation. And no, the building does not wobble
or "shake like jelly". There is no sign that there is a
suspension system.

But when there is an earthquake, the bags underneath the building
would eventually transmit the earthquake energy into a shaking
of the building. And then the wafers inside process machines are ruined.
And likely with our clumsy staff, the odd bottle of reagent grade
chemicals would be dropped on the floor. The building was evacuated
a couple times, because of broken solvent bottles.

The process also uses two poison gases (Phosphine (PH3) and arsine (AsH3)),
so the plant has poison gas detectors. As some kind of joke,
I was in an office area, when two guys walked diagonally through the
room (a "shortcut") while they were wearing their Scott air packs.
This was intended to leave the impression that any employees in the
room were "canaries" suited to testing for any poison gas :-)
No matter where you work, there are always asshole practical jokers.
You're supposed to take your mask off, if you're not using it.

In another building (an even smaller fab on site), I was having
a beer with someone from Health & Safety, and she tells me
that after all these years, she has just installed poison gas
detectors in my building. What a relief! It's good to know
I was in good hands for all the years those detectors weren't there.

A fab then, is a place filled with fun and merriment.

It is a place where people work, and in its way, kinda boring.

   Paul