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Book Reviews: Microchip Fabrication by Peter Van Zant (Fourth Edition)

The subtitle of this book is “A Practical Guide to Semiconductor Processing,” and we found this to be accurate. Though not exactly a book that will keep you up at night wondering what happens next, it is an excellent reference for anyone who wishes to know more about the technical side of semiconductor manufacturing. It is well-indexed, and the chapters are self-contained enough to make it useful for catching up on one topic at a time. We found the introductory material on the background of the semiconductor industry to be particularly interesting, as was a later chapter on the business side of the industry. 

Most of the book, however, is concerned with the process side of chip manufacturing. Van Zant begins with the atom, and explains in an easy-to-read introduction just why it is that conductors work at all, and why silicon is used for most wafers. He also discusses other substrates, and how the wafers themselves are manufactured. He then moves on to an overview of the main processes in wafer fabrication, before moving in ever-increasing levels to detail  to very specific wafer fabrication processes. He concludes with chapters on the various types of devices and integrated circuits in use today, and methods for packaging them. For anyone working in the semiconductor industry, and wanting to better understand its techniques, vocabulary, and history, this book has much to offer.

Our one complaint about the book is that the publisher apparently rushed to make the recent publication date, and as a result, the book is filled with small editing errors (incorrect punctuation, sentence fragments, inaccurate acronyms, and outright garbled sentences in some cases). This makes the book harder to read. However, due to the book’s wealth of technical content, we think you will still find it worthwhile.