IC Knowledge - Glossary

Glossary of Integrated Circuit Terminology - V

Vacuum Tube - a tube contaning a low pressure gas and two or more metal plates that control the flow of electrons.
Vapor Priming - a process where wafers are exposed to a vapor of HMDS to prime the wafer surface prior to photoresist coating. Vapor priming improves photoresist adhesion with only minimal HMDS consumption.
Valence Band - a band of allowed energy states that exists in solids and is completely filled with electrons at zero degrees kelvin. The valence band is separted from the conduction band by an energy gap in insulators and most semiconductors and overalps the conduction band in metals.
Via - a contact between two conductive layers.
Visible Light - Electromagnetic Waves with a Wavelength of 450 to 700 nanometers.
VLSI - Very Large Scale Integration - integrated circuits with greater than 100,000 transistors.
Volatile Memory - memory devices that lose the stored data when power is removed.
Voltage -the electric potential driving current flow given in volts. The higher the voltage the higher the current flow will be through a given resistance.