Integrated Circuits (or ICs) are the root of most of the technology we rely on in our daily lives, from mobile phones to internet data center servers to communication satellites in orbit. For commercial and industrial businesses, ICs provide the computational power found in all automated equipment and software systems as well. Manufacturing ICs falls within the domain of the semiconductor industry, where all circuit boards, processing chips, and transistor arrays are produced.
Semiconductor manufacturing transforms raw silicon, polymers, and metallic materials into electrical transistor switching wafers using production equipment and processes that operate in spaces measured in nanometers. At this scale, precision, accuracy, and fidelity are of the utmost importance. We provide a few examples of semiconductor manufacturing applications, each presenting unique demands onto their control system’s sensors.