How microchips are born
Even though I work as front-end developer, I studied microelectronics at university. With this background it feels to me almost primitive, how microchips are made and how they look inside. It is however very different with anyone I usually speak. Everyone uses smartphones, computers, TVs, calculators, LED lights almost every minute of their everyday life, yet almost nobody knows how their insides that consists of little pieces of plastic with metal legs are made. That is why I decided, I will share some of my vague memories of university with you.
Pray to holy Silicon!
The base of every microchip is substrate. It is in vast majority made of very very veeeery pure silicon (or Gallium Arsenic in the case of LED diodes) that is molten and then re-crystallized into special diamond formation. What does that mean? It means that atoms of silicon has exactly 4 neighboring atoms which bounds are making exact 109.5° triangles. This is the same structure that carbon has in the diamond. So if your girlfriend wants diamond ring, do not hesitate, little diode that is technically diamond (not from carbon but from silicon) costs only few cents!
