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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (5086)	1/21/2003 4:48:38 PM
From: C_Johnson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

FEOL and BEOL Definition: FEOL = Front End Of (production) Line: In integrated-circuit fabrication lines, this conventionally refers to earlier process stages that directly modify the semiconductor substrate or the immediate contacts to it -- mainly dopant diffusion and implantation, sputtering of gate films, oxidations, and the patterning steps associated with these. In contradistinction, *the back end of the line* (BEOL) is metallization (PVD) for interconnects and vias (vertical interconnects between planar interconnects) and associated nonconducting depositions and growths (polymers, glasses, and oxides, nitrides, and oxinitrides) for electrical isolation, dielectrics (for capacitance), diffusion barriers, and mechanical passivation (in particular, to prevent failure of interconnects by electromigration and stress migration). FEOL and BEOL are used in transferred sense to refer to the levels of an IC fabricated in the corresponding stages: BEOL is the metallization layers (say between four and ten) and associated insulating layers; FEOL is everything below that -- mostly transistors. Carl