MEMC Glossary - MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc.

SEMI: Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute. Sets specifications for the semiconductor industry.Silicon: Tetravalent nonmetallic element that occurs combined as the most abundant element next to oxygen in the earth’s crust andis used in alloys and electronic devices.Single Crystal: When the atoms in the crystal are all aligned in the same way.Slip: A process of plastic deformation in which one part of the crystal undergoes a shear displacement relative to another in a fashionthat preserves the crystallinity of the material. The direction is on a specific crystallographic plane.Slug: Thick piece of silicon, usually a wedge cut, used to test the material characteristics for customer specs.Slurry: Solid suspension in liquid used for slicing, lapping, and polishing.SOI: Silicon on Insulator, usually achieved by bonding two wafers, one of which has oxide on top.SRP - Spreading Resistance Profiling: The resistance measured between the conductive metal of a point probe and a large area,relatively low-resistance semiconductor contact, dominated by the resistivity of the semiconductor volume close to the problem.Stacking Faults: Pyramid shaped imperfections in the silicon wafer.Substrate: Basic surface on which a material adheres. A single-crystal slice that is the basis for subsequent processing operations,such as epi layer deposition, diffusion, ion implants, etc.Surface Photovoltage (SPV): test for recombination minority carrier lifetime.Swirl: Shallow pits looked for during visual inspection. Helical or concentric features that are visible to the unaided eye afterpreferential etch, and appear to be discontinuous under 150x magnification.TTaper: A measure of the flatness of a wafer, taper being thicker at the edges than at the center.Thickness: Cross sectional depth of a silicon slice measured in mils (1 mil = 0.001 inch).TIR: Total Indicator Reading, the distance between the highest and lowest point on the wafer surface measured normal to the focalplane.Total Thickness Variation (TTV): variation of thickness from the center and both sides of the wafer.UVWWarp: Maximum distance from the lowest point to the highest point on the wafer’s surface.X