Wafers used for making semiconductors are round — but this wastes quite a few chips around the periphery of the wafer in the fabrication process. Wouldn't it make sense to make the wafer as a square or rectangle instead?
Is there some aspect of the lithography process that requires that the surface be round?
Best Answer
As the wafer material is drawn up out of the molten silicon, it is spun in order to produce a single uniform silicon crystal via the Czochralski process. It is this spinning that produces the round profile of the wafer itself.