: How are manufacturers able to manufacture really small cpu transistors?
In: Technology
This is a very complicated question since modern processors take like 3 months and over 1000 steps to make, but ill do my best to skip all the detail and make it really ELI5
They use special chemicals and light to draw a pattern, or mask, on the silicon. They can then modify or remove the parts of the silicon that is not exposed. This process along with several other specialized processes for each step is repeated to modify the silicon to make transistors, replace parts of it with wiring to connect everything and then build a big stack of wiring on top of it that connects it all to the rest of the computer.
They key processes used are:
Lithography (drawing a pattern with light and chemicals)
Implant (modifying exposed silicon by adding trace amounts of other atoms to it)
Etch (removing exposed silicon (or other materials) by either chemical solutions or chemical plasmas)
Deposition (depositing a film on the silicon, sometimes to fill in silicon that was removed with etch, sometimes to make a new film that will be etched to have something else filled into it)
Polish (smoothing out the wafer after various steps make it rough or deposit too much material)
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