Inside Micron Taiwan’s Semiconductor Factory | Taiwan’s Mega Factories EP1

this could be the world's cleanest Factory it's at The Cutting Edge of human achievement where technology meets the future and it's constantly developing if you cannot innovate you will not survive in the indust they take silicon one of the world's most materials and stack billions of circuits and transistors on it their mission to add billions more on chips that are always getting [Music] smaller every day you need to do something new if not you are falling behind in a world where everything depends on computing power tomorrow is being created right here inside this Mega [Music]

[Music] Factory Monday morning peak time for water and power usage it's critical one glitch could spell disaster on the factory [Music] floor captain of this Starship Rex live he's the one with all the responsibility making sure the supplies are constant and [Music] reliable it's more than challenging a break in production can cost Millions it places this Energy Center in a crucial role safeguarding the lifeblood of this semiconductor giant at the heart of the process silicon a substance that makes microchips possible sometimes it conducts electricity sometimes it doesn't depending on how a little electrical voltage is

applied hence it's called a semiconductor it may seem crazy but basically a chip is just a lot of switches yet it's way more complex than it appears years these microscopic switches are the basic components of all Computing whatever you want your chip to do it's the billions of transistors on board that make it possible the more transistors there are the more complex the computations possible and the more your device can do from Communications Computing medial health and even military purposes they are basically the brain of modern Electronics Taiwan punches above its weight when it comes

to creating chips not least thanks to its long experience and its geographical location [Music] ranged across three science Parks from the north to Central and down to the south of Taiwan there's a dense cluster of facilities built to serve every stage of Chip production taken together they make Taiwan the most significant producer of semiconductors in the world Taiwan is the only location around the world that manufactures both the most Leading Edge logic products and also Leading Edge memory so the Leading Edge Logics obviously is produced by tsmc and the leading Ed Memories by Micron at

the center of the cluster is Micron Technology one of taiwan's largest semiconductor [Music] manufacturers the company was founded in the USA but it has also made itself a home in Taiwan with a vast Factory performing the bulk of its manufacturing it's been here for nearly 30 years and is one of the reasons why the island has become preeminent in semiconductor production the scale and magnitude of mic manufactur in Taiwan is just unparalled 25% of Micron employees work in Taiwan and we produce 65% of the Micron D the worldwide market share is about more than 10%

so Mega FB is yes but it doesn't it's not an overnight work this is the factory 1 million square m of production the size of 140 football pitches the entire process process takes place within these walls from R&D through fabrication assembly and testing right through the sales we have h two manufacturing plants one in tan Gan the other one right here in taong Hoi I'm not going to tell you the how much it is but it's a mega Factory so yeah Jon lean bin has been working in semiconductor engineering for three decades he's a perfectionist

and you have to be he Prides himself on getting everything right down to the Last Detail semiconductor manufacturing today it's involving more than 1,000 steps and we are not talking about just getting one step correct we are talking about getting all thousand over steps correctly line up to be able to have a functional chips the first step is design a Monumental task given that billions of transistors have to be fitted onto each tiny chip semiconductor design it's actually developing the architecture for inte Creer circuits so design is like kind of a building a skyscrapper uh

Architects and silver Engineers that we discuss about the high level building plan where to put the utilities how to lay out the rooms once the design is complete it's sent to the fabrication area otherwise known as The Fab where it will be made getting in is not a simple process there is one enemy that can never be permitted to enter [Music] dust not one particle can be brought in it's called gowning but it's not really a gown that they put on they call it a bunny suit but despite the funny name it's one of the

most vital pieces of equipment in the factory it's designed to keep the dust hairs and skin particles we shed the whole time from polluting the pristine Factory floor even the furniture in the gow room is designed to maximize cleanliness it's all made from stainless steel right down to the benches and Sho racks once you're tucked safely inside your bunny suit there's one more stage before you can finally enter the clean area you need to take a special shower filtered air is blasted through dozens of vents removing any particulates that might have made it this far

this is like a half a minute out of 1 million years that's the amount of the control that we have to in order for us to be able to have successful our wafer Fabrications the production line is 100 times cleaner than any Hospital operating room but cleanliness is just a precondition the work is yet to begin the machines here are some of the world's most sophisticated without them the technical advances made in the design rooms could not be made a reality it all starts with a perfect clean silicon wafer 12 in across it's spun at

high speed a few drops of a UV sensitive liquid are enough to co the wafer [Music] [Applause] evenly and then it's into the photolithography machine it's a bit like the way photos used to be printed in a dark room but in a machine costing a $100 million and with the accuracy to match 60 years ago a transistor we are able to see using humans uh Naked Eyes today the size is in fact like almost 10,000 times smaller than a human hair there huge amount of uh Innovations uh especially coming from photo lithographics in order for

us to pring or Define such small patterns onto a waers inside the machine the wafer is exposed to UV light projected through a mask carrying the design like a film negative this light optically prints the circuit design onto the wafer causing exposed areas to solidify while unexposed ones are etched away this process happens time and time again as the circuitry is built up in layers and with the Pathways in the circuits measuring just a few nanometers the tiniest bit of contamination could disrupt the entire production line the staff may be in their bunny suits but

the best way to keep the chance of contamination to a minimum is to keep the people out to do that you need to automate whatever you can getting machines to move the Wafers about the factory floor not only keeps humans away from them but it also optimizes delivery efficiency loading machines take the printed Wafers and place them in specialized containers these containers are then hoisted up into little buggies running along overhead rails with all this high-speed traffic the little vehicles are covered in sensors so they can detect one another and regulate their speed if they

get too close there are thousands of them in this Mega Factory and together they travel nearly 400,000 km every day the equivalent of circling the planet 10 times alt together there are thousands of huge machines on the factory floor and as expensive and reliable as they are they still need constant monitoring fortunately for purposes of keeping out contamination this can be done remotely by a remarkably small crew located at the far end of the factory wolf Chan is in charge of this crew they have to make sure that the hund or so processes inside the

clean area are all running to plan they have at their disposal over 50,000 sensors and 250 million control points this results in an astonishing flow of data reaching up to 30 pedabytes every single day after the Wafers have been tested 80% of the chip making work is done but now they meet their final challenge to be transformed into usable components [Music] each wafer has had many chips printed onto it now they have to be separated this is done by one of the oldest Technologies in use here cutting with diamond [Music] blades the individual chips are

extracted and placed one by one onto circuit boards next they have to be connected up so that they can communicate with other components fine gold wire makes the connections placed by yet more Precision machines silicon wafer itself is very fragile if there's any humidity any corrosions in the environment it could damage the Silicon chips so the backend process will en encapsulate this silicon chip so that it's able to protect against any kind of environment damage as well as kind of mechanical damage once in their familiar black protective casing these chips are tested any that aren't

up to scratch are weeded [Applause] out then all qualified parts are laser Tagged so they can be readily [Music] identified [Music] now they're ready to head out into the world and be put to use this extraordinary process has undoubtedly changed the face of the world and will continue to do so as it is refined and continues to develop but as with everything the benefits it brings come at of cost back in the Starship where the factory is kept running Rex Li and his team are attempting to mitigate the burden inevitably placed on the environment by

the demands of such a mega Factory they're trying to achieve the same success with a range of other chemicals used in the chip making process what at 15% concentration would previously have been sent for incineration can at 80% head out for recycling the factory uses more water than any other resource a resource that is under increasing pressure worldwide clever treatment systems here at the factory reclaim nearly 80% of the water are used dramatically reducing consumption these green Walls help reduce the energy used to maintain the environment within the factory and the use of renewable energy

saves the equivalent of the power used by a small town we only give our chips and nothing else and which means we trying to leave as small environmental footprint as possible you see the downside impact of the global warming and we need to do our part and we'll continue to do so in Tai as well [Music] world of the semiconductor an Exquisite Fusion of Art and Science where precision and Ingenuity intertwine in an intricate dance thanks to the ceaseless Innovation and Around the Clock manufacturing Within These Mega factories human civilization advances at light speed so

the next time you send a text snap a photo or stream a video remember the extraordinary Journey that propels us into the future one chip at a [Music] time [Music]