Mexico will propose to the United States to produce wafers for chips

MEXICO, (Ocotber 28, 2021).- The proposal will be presented on November 9 as part of the work of the High-Level Economic Dialogue between Mexico and the United States (DEAN), where both countries agreed to promote shared investments to strengthen the semiconductor production chain.

In these supply chains that we are working on right now with the DEAN and with the United States, we have decided that Mexico would have to work in three areas (sic): in the part of the “wafers”, in the part of what is tests, and we are already advanced in this, where we will take a very concrete proposal for next November 9, “ said Tatiana Clouthier in his appearance on Wednesday before the Economy Commission in the Senate of the Republic.

According to the company Tower Semiconductor, wafer making is a complex process that involves building layers of conductive and insulating materials on raw wafers in intricate patterns that define the function of the integrated circuit.

Manufacturing integrated circuits requires hundreds of interrelated steps performed on different types of equipment, and each step must be completed with extreme precision for finished ICs to function properly.

“With regard to semiconductors or the shortage of these has been one of the areas in which we have focused the most,” said Clouthier.

After the IC is manufactured, the wafers are transferred to the assembly and testing facility.

In the assembly process, each wafer is cut into individual dies or semiconductors and tested. Bad dies are discarded, while good dies are packaged and assembled.

The assembly protects the integrated circuit, facilitates its integration into electronic systems, and allows heat dissipation. After assembly, each IC is tested for functionality, voltage, current, and timing. After testing, the complete IC is shipped to customers or to customers’ PCB manufacturing facility.

On the projects related to partial manufacturing, testing and the shortage of semiconductors, Clouthier also commented that she has had meetings with businessmen from Baja California, Ciudad Juárez and Jalisco and officials from the Conacyt.

“We have drawn some routes to start accelerating the processes and the installation of a semiconductor plant per se is not as fast as we are thinking (sic),” said the official.

Also as part of the work of the DEAN A plan has been drawn up for the training of personnel in certain industries, including the semiconductor industry.

“We are making an approach with Conalep and with different Conacyt institutes that are located in Ciudad Juárez, in order to bring new technologies to our population and those that already have some training orient them to another much more advanced technology, since semiconductors are they have been moving with a very fast speed in terms of more advanced technology ”, he indicated.

The wafer serves as a substrate for microelectronic devices embedded in and on the wafer. It undergoes many microfabrication processes including doping, ion implantation, etching, thin-film deposition of various materials, and photolithographic modeling.

Source: The Canadian News