which wafer?

By Devin Tran

What comes to mind when you encounter the word wafer?

Is it the delicious snack that comes to mind? Or a disk? 

What else can a wafer be, if not the snack that everybody thinks of? In the tech world, a wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor that is used to further advance technology. 

Truclinh Tran is a current employee at the establishment PureWafer, which works with wafers, and she works with them for one of the steps. She will share her personal experience and her knowledge about what happens to the wafers in her area.

Tran: A wafer is used to make a microchip to test on the electronic devices.

This company mainly works with reprocessed wafers, meaning that they were used and created by another industrial company before, but will be worked with to be remade in order to look and act exactly how a brand new wafer should function. 

Tran: Our company doesn’t make the wafers but we just reprocess the used wafers.

As for the actual creation of the wafers, the process starts with creating a large silicon crystal which is mainly called a boule. For the next step, workers have to slice that boule into thin slices which then would be called a wafer. There are many other steps but a few main ones would be cleaning, polishing, and etching. All of these different jobs have their respective areas in the facility in order to pull off the job. 

Of course, the wafer-making process isn’t always perfect. Mistakes like applying the wrong oxide thickness on the wafer, or just completely breaking the wafer happen often and there’s nothing that can be done when a mistake is made but to do it all over again. If a wafer has something as small as a little scratch, the entire process of the wafer has to be redone completely.

Tran: I have to tell that person who made the mistake to rework the whole process all over again. And it takes a really long time to redo it.

As for what step that Tran does, she works in the clean room, which is also the step that involves working with furnaces and applying a thin film of oxidation on top of the wafer. This thin film of oxidation that is applied to the wafer helps it be protected from other chemicals that are applied to it, like during the etching process, which is the step that removes all the used colors on a wafer.

Tran: In the area where I work, which is the clean room, the wafers need to be loaded into a quartz boat and placed in a furnace and it depends on the customer's request for the thermal oxide and if it takes longer or shorter.

Tran works in the clean room which involves furnaces with up to 1922 degrees fahrenheit. Working with this extreme amount of heat, there would have to be some type of uniform or cover to keep workers safe. The suit or uniform that is used for the clean room is called the PPE suit, which is a white suit which is made to be able to fend off the wearers from liquid chemicals or biological hazards. Workers’ shoes will have to be covered, along with their hair, eyes, and hands.

Tran: Some negatives is standing with the PPE clothing all day especially in the summer because it's so hot and makes me feel uncomfortable.

This is just some of those negatives to working in a place involving furnaces, and high heat. 

Even when there are negatives, there are also positives. Though the work there isn’t the easiest and safest, the company likes to have parties once in a while to motivate their employees and give them some rest.

Tran: We have parties for holidays, there’s a lot of food, games with prizes that make it really fun.

Even though the company and what they work with isn’t that safe and not recognized as much, there aren’t that many requirements or experience needed to become an employee. It’s as simple as general communication skills, understanding and speaking English, and following directions. 

Not everyone will enjoy a job that comes with so many dangerous aspects but for Tran, she enjoys it as it gives her a sight that not many people see and helps her develop her skills for communication and technology.

Tran: I feel like it’s more a stable job for me and it helps me learn a lot of new things at the company.

PureWafer is like the behind the scenes of steps far before the creation of microchips. It’s interesting to see how complicated and how dangerous these jobs are. We never really know what happens until we look behind those curtains, the behind the scenes.

For the Warrior Times, this is Devin Tran.