A die in the context of integrated circuit

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

s is a small block of semiconducting material, on which a given functional circuit is fabricated.
Typically, integrated circuits are produced in large batches on a single wafer

Wafer (electronics)

A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices...

 of electronic-grade silicon

Monocrystalline silicon

Monocrystalline silicon or single-crystal Si, or mono-Si is the base material of the electronic industry. It consists of silicon in which the crystal lattice of the entire solid is continuous, unbroken to its edges. It can be prepared intrinsic, i.e...

 (EGS) or other semiconductor (such as GaAs) through processes such as photolithography

Photolithography

Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...

. The wafer is cut (“diced”) into many pieces, each containing one copy of the circuit. Each of these pieces is called a die.

There are three commonly used plural forms: dice, dies, and die.

See also

• Integrated circuit design
  Integrated circuit design
  Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a subset of electrical engineering and computer engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs...
  
  
• Semiconductor fabrication
  Semiconductor fabrication
  Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer...
  
  
• Wafer dicing
  Wafer dicing
  Wafer dicing is the process by which die are separated from a wafer of semiconductor following the processing of the wafer. The dicing process can be accomplished by scribing and breaking, by mechanical sawing or by laser cutting...
  
  
• Die preparation
  Die preparation
  Die preparation is a step of semiconductor device fabrication during which a wafer is prepared for IC packaging and IC testing. The process of die preparation typically consists of 2 steps: wafer mounting and wafer dicing.-Wafer mounting:...