1. From system to silicon

1.1 Integrated circuit manufacturing technologies

An electronic system involves several electronic functions, and generally comprises analog and/or digital circuits. Until the mid-1960s, electronic functions were realized using discrete components, vacuum tubes, and then, following the invention of the transistor in 1948, using the latter. The invention of the transistor was the first step in the revolution brought about by microelectronics (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for J. Bardeen, W. Bratt and J. Bardeen). Bardeen, W. Brattain and W. Schockley). It's a small component (a few micrometers), made from semiconductor materials (mainly silicon) by a succession of photolithographic processes, diffusion of chemical species (dopants) and thin-film deposition.

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