Electronic Manufacturing

The scientific and technology branch has since evolved into a branched area of knowledge with the invention of electrical and integrated circuits (IC) at its core as well as electrical components such as transistors, diodes, and vacuum tubes. The advent of modern semiconductor technology in the 1950s led to IC technology and products and the rapid commercialization and industrialization in the manufacturing of radios, audio systems microchips, computers, telephones, televisions, and various other forms of consumer electronics, industrial process control and information technology (IT) systems, and commercial IT products.

The field of electronic manufacturing covers a wide range of product industries and markets, but is at home with core production stage of integrated circuit manufacturing, which is overwhelming completed at foundries in East Asia including Taiwan, India and China, but also in Mexico and developed economies such as the United States.

Electronic or IC manufacturing begins with semiconductor materials, commonly crystalline silicon but also germanium and assorted semiconductive compounds, formed and cut as wafers. Semiconductor layers can also be formed through epitaxial growth of deposited layers through a variety of energy-intensive processes at the front-end-of-line (FEOL), followed by chemical, physical and plasma etching and removal processes, followed by patterning of the wafer surface and thermal and ion implantation modificaionts. Hundreds of sequenced processing steps occur before back-end-of-line (BEOL) processing begins with the creation and interconnection of electrical circuits from deposited metal (conductor) layers. Various packaging and device integration steps proceed with displays, vacuum tubes and other device components to manufacture electronic products.