
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of
electronic circuit
An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electri ...
s on one small flat piece (or "chip") of
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
material, usually
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ...
.
Large numbers
Large numbers are numbers significantly larger than those typically used in everyday life (for instance in simple counting or in monetary transactions), appearing frequently in fields such as mathematics, cosmology, cryptography, and statistical ...
of tiny
MOSFET
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
s (metal–oxide–semiconductor
field-effect transistors
The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor. FETs ( JFETs or MOSFETs) are devices with three terminals: ''source'', ''gate'', and ''drain''. FETs cont ...
) integrate into a small chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete
electronic component
An electronic component is any basic discrete device or physical entity in an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singular form and are n ...
s. The IC's
mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to
integrated circuit design
Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic componen ...
has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
s. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
.
Computers,
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...
s and other
home appliance
A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as cooking, cleaning and food preservation.
Appliances are divided into three t ...
s are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs such as modern
computer processors and
microcontrollers
A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs ( processor cores) along with memory and programmab ...
.
Very-large-scale integration
Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...
was made practical by technological advancements in
metal–oxide–silicon
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
(MOS)
semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are pres ...
. Since their origins in the 1960s, the size, speed, and capacity of chips have progressed enormously, driven by technical advances that fit more and more MOS transistors on chips of the same size – a modern chip may have many billions of MOS transistors in an area the size of a human fingernail. These advances, roughly following
Moore's law
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empi ...
, make the computer chips of today possess millions of times the capacity and thousands of times the speed of the computer chips of the early 1970s.
ICs have two main advantages over
discrete circuit
An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electrica ...
s: cost and performance. The cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by
photolithography
In integrated circuit manufacturing, photolithography or optical lithography is a general term used for techniques that use light to produce minutely patterned thin films of suitable materials over a substrate, such as a silicon wafer (electroni ...
rather than being constructed one transistor at a time. Furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the IC's components switch quickly and consume comparatively little power because of their small size and proximity. The main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost of designing them and fabricating the required
photomask
A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography and the production of integrated circuits (ICs or "chips") in particular. Masks are used ...
s. This high initial cost means ICs are only commercially viable when
high production volumes are anticipated.
Terminology
An ''integrated circuit'' is defined as:
A circuit in which all or some of the circuit elements are inseparably associated and electrically interconnected so that it is considered to be indivisible for the purposes of construction and commerce.
Circuits meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies, including
thin-film transistor
A thin-film transistor (TFT) is a special type of field-effect transistor (FET) where the transistor is thin relative to the plane of the device. TFTs are grown on a supporting (but non-conducting) substrate. A common substrate is glass, becaus ...
s,
thick-film technologies, or
hybrid integrated circuit
A hybrid integrated circuit (HIC), hybrid microcircuit, hybrid circuit or simply hybrid is a miniaturized electronic circuit constructed of individual devices, such as semiconductor devices (e.g. transistors, diodes or monolithic ICs) and p ...
s. However, in general usage ''integrated circuit'' has come to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a ''monolithic integrated circuit'', often built on a single piece of silicon.
History
An early attempt at combining several components in one device (like modern ICs) was the
Loewe 3NF
The Loewe 3NF was an early attempt to combine several functions in one electronic device.
Produced by the German Loewe-Audion GmbH as early as 1926, the device consisted of three triode valves (tubes) in a single glass envelope together with ...
vacuum tube from the 1920s. Unlike ICs, it was designed with the purpose of
tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisd ...
, as in Germany, radio receivers had a tax that was levied depending on how many tube holders a radio receiver had. It allowed radio receivers to have a single tube holder.
Early concepts of an integrated circuit go back to 1949, when German engineer
Werner Jacobi (
Siemens AG) filed a patent for an integrated-circuit-like semiconductor amplifying device
showing five
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
s on a common substrate in a three-stage
amplifier
An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost th ...
arrangement. Jacobi disclosed small and cheap
hearing aid
A hearing aid is a device designed to improve hearing by making sound audible to a person with hearing loss. Hearing aids are classified as medical devices in most countries, and regulated by the respective regulations. Small audio amplifiers su ...
s as typical industrial applications of his patent. An immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported.
Another early proponent of the concept was
Geoffrey Dummer
Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer, MBE (1945), C. Eng., IEE Premium Award, FIEEE, MIEE, USA Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm (25 February 1909 – 9 September 2002) was an English electronics engineer and consultant, who is credited as bei ...
(1909–2002), a radar scientist working for the
Royal Radar Establishment
The Royal Radar Establishment was a research centre in Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1953 as the Radar Research Establishment by the merger of the Air Ministry's Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) ...
of the British
Ministry of Defence
{{unsourced, date=February 2021
A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in state ...
. Dummer presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in
Washington, D.C. on 7 May 1952. He gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas and unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956. Between 1953 and 1957,
Sidney Darlington
Sidney Darlington (July 18, 1906 – October 31, 1997) was an American electrical engineer and inventor of a transistor configuration in 1953, the Darlington pair. He advanced the state of network theory, developing the insertion-loss synth ...
and Yasuo Tarui (
Electrotechnical Laboratory
The , or AIST, is a Japanese research facility headquartered in Tokyo, and most of the workforce is located in Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki, and in several cities throughout Japan. The institute is managed to integrate scientific and engineeri ...
) proposed similar chip designs where several transistors could share a common active area, but there was no
electrical isolation
Galvanic isolation is a principle of isolating functional sections of electrical systems to prevent current flow; no direct conduction path is permitted.John Huntington ''Show Networks and Control Systems: Formerly Control Systems for Live ...
to separate them from each other.
[
The monolithic integrated circuit chip was enabled by the inventions of the ]planar process
The planar process is a manufacturing process used in the semiconductor industry to build individual components of a transistor, and in turn, connect those transistors together. It is the primary