Inside Seagate's Cleanroom

Inside one of Seagate's wafer fabrication cleanrooms

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Seagate
• wafer
• read/write
• head
• fab
• cleanroom
• SSD
• disk
• drive
• pete
• steege

[petesteg]

The read/write sensor of every hard drive is made this way. Just as important (maybe more so!) than the disk media.

[redbulladdict20109]

@fungicord actually broken and whole si wafers do get recycled. They get recycled into lower purity products like solar, or into cycling, seasoning, or filler wafers....

[kamilskaz]

i go to sleep after archive my daily output

[orbitaaltube]

POLARIS 2500 in the background - what a machine!

[fungicord]

@lexichronicle2 Remember that a major goal during semiconductor manufacturing is to make the silicon impure (i.e. doping, ion implantation) to alter the silicon's properties toward either conductive or non-conductive to change how the silicon behaves. Add to that the thin metal layers (copper or aluminum) and the many chemical etches and depositions, and the overall purity is gone in a hurry.

[fungicord]

@lexichronicle2 Sometimes there's a reclamation process, and the wafers are crushed during this. I've heard the goal is to retrieve some of the exotic elements used during processing. The purity value of the silicon is completely lost after crushing because it needs to be fully heat-processed again to become a monolithic crystal of silicon ready for slicing into wafers. I imagine most companies will jump (or have jumped) on IBM's bandwagon: watch?v=ooMmwSqr9XY

[lexichronicle2]

@fungicord chuck them into recycling bins. it's not going in the land fill is it, after all the purification that's already been done

[fungicord]

@lexichronicle2 I used to work for TI in a cleanroom, and they do just chuck the wafers, especially broken ones. The primary cost of chips is in the extreme processing, not the value of materials. The real reason you can't take wafers home (I asked) is because they're from other companies' products with trade secrets involved. Also, many fabs also make military weapon chips, and you can't let "christianmom" get those.

[Hughesburner]

@chrstianmom Wafers aren't cheap, priceless if they are partially processed. Companies keep a pretty good eye on them. Good luck.

[lexichronicle2]

@chrstianmom I don't think they just chuck the wafers. They will recycle them into the new silicon because there's already money invested in purifying the material. If it's already gone through some processing, they will be able to clean the surfaces back to bare.