In the heart of the Arizona desert, some of the country's most advanced semiconductor chips are being manufactured at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) facility.
"Semiconductors are basically everything that's in your phone, in your computers. It's the brains of everything that has a power switch and anything that needs to compute," said TSMC Arizona's President, Rose Castanares.
Creating these tiny technological marvels is an incredibly complex process.
"Making a wafer is the most complicated manufacturing process in the world. I can't imagine anything else more difficult than this," said engineer Konstantinos Ninios.
The manufacturing requires up to 4,000 precise steps, and there's no room for error.
Step inside the Arizona TSMC facility with ABC15's Ben Brown and see part one of an exclusive three-part series, in the player below.
"You're done. You have to start from the beginning. This wafer cannot be used anymore," said Ninios.
What makes TSMC different from other semiconductor companies is its business model.
They don't design the chips, they build them customized for clients.
"That goes back to our pure-play foundry model. We have very in-depth discussions about how they want their chips to perform, if they want to be able to have different types of transistors, [and] if they want different types of metal layers. But in the end, it's their design and we manufacture for them," said Castanares.
The manufacturing happens inside a clean room — a tightly controlled environment where chips are created, tested, and perfected.
Workers like Sterling Wilson, an EBO [Exposure, Bit, Optical] mask technician, ensure quality control throughout the process.
"What I'm doing is EUV... Basically, an electric ultraviolet beam that's EBL, electric ultraviolet beam, and I'm looking through this scope... at all these different things. Again, trying to make sure that exactly how we have our pattern is how they have their map," said Sterling.
TSMC's first fabrication facility (fab) is already operational in Phoenix, producing four-nanometer chips. But the company has much bigger plans.
Earlier this year, TSMC announced another $100 billion investment to ultimately build six fabs, a research and development center, and two advanced packaging facilities in Arizona.
When asked about the timeline for these expansions, Castanares told ABC15, "So 'Fab Two', we will be starting to move in equipment soon. For 'Fab Three', you can see that the building excavation has started, and we will be, hopefully, moving that construction as quickly as possible."
The company aims to have Fab Two operational by 2028 and Fab Three by the end of the decade, with them showing us some of the first looks at the Fab Three construction site.
"I think that it's going to take us a little bit of time to be able to get all of the permits and all of the construction crews that we need. But there's a huge demand, almost insatiable demand, for AI and high-performance computing, and so we'll be doing everything we can to make that a reality as soon as possible," Castanares said.
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