Introduction

Abstract

Inside most any semiconductor fabrication facility in the world at any given moment, there are operators and engineers standing in front of machines with shiny stainless steel facades, loading and unloading cassettes of wafers with complex patterns of dopants, defects, and films on their surfaces. From the fabrication side all the machines look pretty much the same these days (figure 1-1); unless you happen to recognize the model name, you wouldn’t be able to tell if there’s a chemical vapor deposition reactor on the other side just by looking at the façade.