The front bays contain two of the most complex pieces of equipment. In the first bay, electrically active "doping" impurities are shot into the silicon wafer by ion implanters. These are compact atomic accelerators that operate at 10,000 to 1,000,000 Volts.
In the second bay, photolithography machines pattern the silicon wafers. These are microphotography cameras that create hugely complex images with features as small as 0.1 microns across. A single image (measuring no more than 2 cm on a side) can pattern the features of more than 100 million transistors simultaneously across each chip.
