Editing Wafer (electronics) (section)

== History ==
{{expand section|date=January 2015}}
{{see also|List of silicon producers}}

In the semiconductor industry, the term wafer appeared in the 1950s to describe a thin round slice of semiconductor material, typically [[germanium]] or silicon. The round shape characteristic of these wafers comes from [[Boule (crystal)|single-crystal ingots]] usually produced using the [[Czochralski method]]. Though, silicon wafers were first introduced in the 1940s.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Reinhard Voelkel | title=Wafer-scale micro-optics fabrication | journal=Advanced Optical Technologies | year=2012 | volume=1 | issue=3 | page=135 | doi=10.1515/aot-2012-0013| bibcode=2012AdOT....1..135V | s2cid=137606531 | doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author1=T. Doi |author2=I.D. Marinescu |author3=Syuhei Kurokawa | title=Advances in CMP Polishing Technologies, Chapter 6 – Progress of the Semiconductor and Silicon Industries – Growing Semiconductor Markets and Production Areas | pages=297–304 | publisher=Elsevier | year=2012 | doi=10.1016/B978-1-4377-7859-5.00006-5}}</ref>

By 1960, silicon wafers were being manufactured in the U.S. by companies such as [[MEMC Electronic Materials|MEMC]] and [[SunEdison]]. In 1965, American engineers Eric O. Ernst, Donald J. Hurd, and Gerard Seeley, while working under [[IBM]], filed Patent US3423629A<ref>{{cite web|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US3424629A/en|title=High capacity epitaxial apparatus and method|website=google.com}}</ref> for the first high-capacity [[epitaxy|epitaxial]] apparatus.