Integrated Circuit Everything You Need to Know

IC stands for integrated circuit. This specifically refers to the use of condensed circuitry instead of the older methods of creating circuits with wires, transistors, and other components all adding to the size of the overall circuit board. An integrated circuit is a way of circuits that eliminates the need for several components through the use of silicon board and soldering for electrical conduction. Integrated circuits work by removing the need for transistors, resistors, diodes, capacitors, and wires by instead using silicon boards and soldering.
 
The need for the integrated circuit (IC) was driven by the need for smaller and smaller components. Prior to British scientist Geoffrey Dummer's first IC design the size of a device was limited by the ability to fit as many components into the circuit board as possible. Wires, transistors, and all the other components that make up the circuit needed to work together to function properly, and the size of the components determined the size of the device.
 
The importance of the integrated circuit (IC) is in its ability to allow for the miniaturization of components. Smaller components means smaller overall size, which allowed for the creation of almost every device we use today from smart TVs to cell phones. Interestingly enough, all three original inventors of the integrated circuit (IC) had backgrounds working with radar technology.
 
What are integrated circuits?
 
An integrated circuit (IC), sometimes called a chip, microchip or microelectronic circuit, is a semiconductor wafer on which thousands or millions of tiny resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors are fabricated. An IC can function as an amplifier, oscillator, timer, counter, logic gate, computer memory, microcontroller or microprocessor.
 
An IC is the fundamental building block of all modern electronic devices. As the name suggests, it's an integrated system of multiple miniaturized and interconnected components embedded into a thin substrate of semiconductor material (usually silicon crystal).
 
A single IC could contain thousands or millions of:
 
transistors
resistors
capacitors
Diodes
 
Additional components may also reside on it, all interconnected through a complex web of semiconductor wafers, silicon, copper and other materials. Size-wise, each component is small, usually microscopic. The resulting circuit, a monolithic chip, is also tiny -- often just enough to occupy a few square millimeters or centimeters of space.
 
One common example of a modern-day IC is the computer processor, which typically contains millions or billions of transistors, capacitors, logic gates, etc., connected together to form a complex digital circuit. Although the processor is an IC, not all ICs are processors.
 
Who invented integrated circuit?
 
The idea of integrating electronic circuits into a single device was fascinating and the first known integrated transistor amplifier was developed in 1949 by the German physicist and engineer Werner Jacobi. Between 1950 and 1957 many similar chips were designed where several transistors could share a common active area, but there was no electrical isolation to separate them from each other. Till now the idea of integrated circuits could not be implemented by the industry, until a breakthrough came, in late 1958. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, an American electrical engineer patented the principle of integration, created the prototype ICs and commercialized them. Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit, rather than a monolithically integrated circuit chip.
 
In 1959, Kurt Lehovec developed a way to electrically isolate components on a semiconductor crystal, using p-n junction isolation. Robert Noyce invented a way to connect the IC components and proposed an improved version of insulation and patented the first monolithic IC chip. In 1960, using the idea of Noyce, a group of Jay Lasts of Fairchild Semiconductor created the first operational semiconductor IC. A patent war was started between Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments which was settled in 1966 by the agreement on cross-licensing.
 
There is no consensus on who invented IC. The American press of the 1960s named four people for the invention of IC – Kilby, Lehovec, Noyce, and Hoerni. But in 1970 they shortened the list to Kilby and Noyce. In 2000, Nobel Prize in physics was given to Kilby for his part in the invention of the integrated circuits. At the end of the 2000s, some Historians's reinstated the idea of multiple IC inventors and then revised the contribution of Kilby and state that Modern IC chips are based on Noyce's monolithic IC, rather than Kilby's hybrid IC.
 
How integrated circuits are made?
 
Electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors are created directly on the surface of a silicon crystal in an integrated circuit. If you first grasp some of the fundamentals of how integrated circuits are made, the manufacturing process will make more sense.
 
Even before the first integrated circuit (IC) was created, it was recognized that silicon could be used to make ordinary electrical components. How might these, as well as the connecting circuits, be made from the same piece of silicon? The answer was to change the chemical makeup of small regions on the silicon crystal surface, known as dopants, by introducing other molecules.
 
Some dopants form bonds with silicon, resulting in areas where the dopant atoms can give up one electron. These are referred to as N areas. Other dopants form bonds with the silicon to create areas where the dopant atoms can accept one electron.
 
These are referred to as P regions. A PN junction occurs when a P area meets an N region on the boundary between them. This 0.000004-inch-wide (0.0001-centimeter-wide) border is critical to the operation of integrated circuit components.
 
Within a PN junction, the atoms from the two zones bind together to form a third region termed a depletion region, in which the P dopant atoms absorb all of the excess electrons from the N dopant atoms, thereby depleting them.
 
A positive voltage supplied to the P area can induce an electrical current to pass across the junction into the N region, but a comparable positive voltage applied to the N region will result in little or no current flowing back into the P region.
 
A PN junction’s capacity to conduct or insulate depending on which side of the voltage is applied may be utilized to create integrated circuit components that direct and regulate current flows in the same way that diodes and transistors do.
 
A single PN junction, for example, is all that a diode is. Integrated circuit components that mimic the functions of resistors and capacitors may be created by modifying the number and kinds of dopants, as well as the shapes and relative placements of the P and N regions.
 
Design
 
Some integrated circuits are called “off-the-shelf” products. There is no need to create anything else after that. Voltage regulators, amplifiers, analog switches, and analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog converters are examples of standard ICs. These ICs are often supplied to other firms for use in printed circuit boards for a variety of electronic devices.
 
Raw Materials
 
The majority of integrated circuits are made of pure silicon. Chemically doped to give the N and P regions that make up the integrated circuit components, it serves as the chip’s base or substrate.
 
Only one out of every 10 billion atoms can be an impurity, therefore silicon must be extremely pure. One grain of sugar in 10 buckets of sand would be equal. Silicon dioxide is utilized in IC capacitors as an insulator and a dielectric material.
 
Phosphorus and arsenic are two common N-type dopants. P-type dopants include boron and gallium. Connectors between the various IC components are frequently made of aluminum.
 
Aluminum or gold thin wire leads connect the integrated circuit chip to its mounting package. Ceramic or plastic materials may be used to construct the mounting package.
 
The Process
Hundreds of integrated circuits are created simultaneously on a single, thin slice of silicon, which is subsequently sliced apart into separate IC chips. The manufacturing process takes place in a clean room, which is a highly regulated environment where the air is filtered to eliminate extraneous particles.
 
Lint-free clothing, gloves, and head and foot covers are worn by the few machine users in the room. Even the light sources are filtered since some IC components are sensitive to particular light frequencies. The procedure is lengthy and varies according to the type of chip being manufactured. However, the following is a common procedure:
 
01. A huge, cylindrical piece of silicon crystal being shaved into thin, one-hundredth-inch-thick wafers.
 
02. Several hundred or thousands of completed integrated circuits will be made from each of these wafers.
 
03. On top of the wafer, a specific photoresist solution is applied.
 
04. Over the photoresist, a mask is placed.
 
05. The mask is a representation of the real circuit, with some sections transparent for light to pass through and others opaque to prevent it.
 
06. The wafer is subjected to extremely high levels of UV radiation.
 
07. The wafer is etched under the transparent regions of the mask by ultraviolet radiation, while the areas under the opaque parts of the mask remain unaffected.
 
08. The mask is removed, and any photoresist residue is wiped away.
 
09. After that, the wafer is subjected to a doping substance.
 
10. In the etched portions of the wafer, this results in n-type and p-type regions.
 
11. The technique is repeated for each layer until all of them are complete.
 
12. This, of course, presupposes that the circuit design asks for several layers to be layered on top of each other.
 
13. After that, the individual integrated circuits are disassembled and installed in their final package.
 
How do integrated circuits work?
 
We know that an integrated circuit (see Construction of an Integrated Circuit) is basically a combination of diodes, transistors, and microprocessors in a minimized form on a semi-conductor material called a wafer, which is usually silicon. Each electronic component has a specific function, and when they are combined with each other, they can perform multiple tasks and calculations. We will discuss the functions of these components briefly.
 
1. Diodes
 
Diodes are basically electronic devices that function to control the flow of current within a circuit. Diodes control the amount of current flowing in the circuit and the direction of the current. They allow the current to only flow in certain paths.
 
2. Transistors
 
In the early 20th century, transistor radios were introduced. The purpose of transistors is to store voltages or act as a stabilizer for the circuit. Transistors can be used to amplify a given signal. Transistors can also be used as switches, just like a light switch, except they work with digital circuits. For example, a transistor can allow a certain amount of voltage to enter a part of a circuit by using a gate which will open at a specific voltage. In binary, “1” is for opening the gate and “0” is for closing it. In this way, a transistor sends the data throughout the system.
 
3. Microprocessor
 
The microprocessor is the most important part of the IC. The main purpose of the microprocessor is to provide memory to the system. It also provides memory to perform calculations and follow a certain logic or protocol. The protocol or the logic tells the microprocessor how to process the data and electricity throughout the system. The microprocessor can be referred to as the “operating system” of an integrated circuit, as it allows other components to interact with each other.
 
These components work together within an integrated circuit to carry out different operations. There are many ICs in which the numbers of these electronic components exceed the number of humans on earth.
 
Uses and Applications
Integrated circuits were first practically used by the military in the Second World War, in RADAR. Integrated circuits are in almost every electrical appliance today, from wristwatches to televisions and from juice makers to PCs. The applications of ICs are limitless. Anything can be designed and built with discrete electronic components and put into an integrated circuit. A few examples are video processors, audio amplifiers, memory devices, logic devices, and radio frequency encoders and decoders. The range of IC applications is still increasing at an amazing rate. Computing is one of the major applications of ICs. In olden times, computers consisted of thousands of transistors, which not only created a problem because of their enormous sizes and performance, but also because of the costs involved. Today’s PCs, however, have just a handful of ICs.
 
With developments in integrated circuit technology, production and design costs are being reduced greatly and the performance is improving every day. Newly introduced packaging techniques have increased the reliability with minimized assembly errors and fewer connection problems. It is almost impossible now to find an item of electronic equipment with no IC in it.
 
To sum up, It’s difficult to say with any surety what the integrated circuit’s future holds. Since the development of the gadget, technology has evolved at a rapid pace. The architecture, or circuit layout, on a chip, has changed significantly, but the integrated circuit remains a silicon-based design.