When you are looking to buy silicon wafers, there are a lot of product specifications that completely change the make up and possible purposes of a wafer product. Everything from what material is being used to fabricate the wafer, to the diameter of the wafer, to the resistivity; depending on what your needs are, we have wafers available with all different specifications. Just in case you are ever wondering what these product qualities are describing, we have put together a brief overview of silicon wafer basic definitions. Keep reading to either refresh your memory or learn more about silicon wafers!
What is Type of Silicon Wafer Referring to?
The type of a wafer is referring to the conductivity type. Wafers can carry particular charges and are more commonly referred to as either N-Type or P-Type. Silicon wafers that have more electrons in their current carriers are negatively charges and referred to as N-Type. When Silicon wafers are missing electrons from their current carriers they have a positive charge, so they are P-Type. Certain dopants can give these silicon wafers their charges. Doping wafers with Phosphorous, Antimony, and Arsenic will create a negatively charged material, thus a N-Type wafer. Doping with Boron will produce a P-Type, or positively charged, silicon wafer.
What is a Dopant?
Since we already briefly mentioned it, a dopant is an impurity that is intentionally added to the silicon during the production process in order to alter the chemical properties of the silicon wafer. Similar for the reason listed above, there may be cases where you need a different resistivity for a silicon wafer or you need a p-type or n-type. All of these scenarios can be accomplished through the doping process.
What is Resistivity in Silicon Wafer Properties?
As we mentioned, depending on the purpose of the wafer, the resistivity may need to be altered through doping. What resistivity refers to is the current flow and electron movement in the silicon. By adding more dopants to the silicon, the resistivity is decreased. Materials that have been heavily doped have lower resistivity, which is what is needed.Whatever project you have that requires Silicon Wafers, you can contact Wafer World for all your silicon wafer manufacturing needs.
We have a wide variety of products available online! You can contact our silicon wafer fabrication company online or you can give us a call at 561-842-4441.
