Silicon wafer

Thin slices of monocrystalline silicon produced by sawing of an ingot. An ingot is a cylindrical monocrystal formed by pulling a seed crystal from a silicon melt. The industry wishes to use increasingly large ingots. Currently, the limit for commercially available ingots is a diameter of 300 mm, but the trend is to use 450 mm ingots. The slices or under 1 mm thick; the larger the diameter, the thicker the slices. 
Hundreds to thousands electronic circuits can be fabricated on one wafer. In uncut state, wafers are also used for photovoltaic panels. In semiconductor electronics, a modern silicon wafer is marked by a so-called “flat”, a small notch which specifies the crystal orientation and the doping. For plasma cleaning or plasma etching , stacks of wafers can be treated simultaneously in silica glass boats. gemeinsam behandelt werden.