11nines — Semiconductor manufacturing, taught from the fab floor

Why 11nines exists

The gap between the classroom and the fab.

Your degree taught you what a transistor is. Almost nowhere in India can you learn how one is actually made — the seven hundred steps, the cleanrooms, the machines, the discipline of yield. That knowledge lives inside factories, behind badge-locked doors.

11nines opens that door — at the ground floor. These are the building blocks, taught honestly by someone who lived it: the yellow rooms, the wafer maps, the 3 a.m. excursions. Foundations first, so that when you eventually meet the real thing, you’re not a stranger to it.

Understand the thing deeply, and you carry that seed into whatever you build next. That is the whole mission — plant it here, grow it anywhere.

Why “11nines”? Chip-grade silicon is 99.999999999% pure — eleven nines. One wrong atom in a billion. It is the standard the whole industry is built on, and the one we hold our teaching to.

Close-up of the repeating die pattern printed on a silicon wafer

Billions of transistors, printed with light. You’ll understand the story of how they got there.

The full course

29 modules. One complete journey.

Every module: diagrams, real floor stories, simple language. Nothing a first-year can't follow.

Part A — Foundations

M01

What a chip is

Why one grey element sits between metal and glass — and quietly runs the modern world. Transistor to chip, 1947 to today.

M02

The industry map

Who designs, who makes, who packages — fabs, foundries, equipment, materials — and where India fits.

Part B — Sand to Wafer

M03

Sand to polysilicon

From quartz to 99.999999999% pure — eleven nines. The most obsessive purification on Earth, and our namesake.

M04

Crystal growth

A seed touches molten silicon and pulls out a single perfect crystal taller than you. Slowly. Very slowly.

M05

Wafer manufacturing

Slicing, lapping and polishing a crystal into wafers flatter than anything else humans make.

M06

Engineered substrates

SOI, layer transfer and silicon carbide — the advanced wafers beneath modern chips, taught by someone who made them.

M07

The cleanroom

Bunny suits, yellow light, air changed hundreds of times an hour — why a speck of dust is the enemy.

Part C — Inside the Fab: the Process Loop

M08

The process loop

The repeating cycle of steps — hundreds of them — that turns a blank wafer into a working chip.

M09

Oxidation & furnaces

Growing glass on silicon in furnaces — the oldest trick in the fab, still everywhere.

M10

Litho I: resist & the track

The yellow room: photoresist, spin, bake, develop — how the stencil for every layer is made.

M11

Litho II: exposure, masks & metrology

Printing with light: masks, steppers, wavelengths — and measuring lines a fraction of a hair’s width.

M12

Wet etching

Chemistry baths: fast and cheap — and why acid eating sideways changed the whole industry.

M13

Dry etching: plasma

Electrified gas carving vertical walls — how every fine pattern is made today.

M14

CVD & ALD

Building films from gases — sometimes one atomic layer at a time.

M15

PVD

Sputtering metals in vacuum — how wiring thinner than smoke gets laid down.

M16

Ion implantation

Firing atoms into silicon to change its personality — exactly where the stencil allows.

M17

Annealing & RTP

Healing the damage with heat, in seconds — and the thermal budget every step must respect.

M18

Cleaning & surface prep

The unglamorous step done more times than any other — because purity is the product.

M19

CMP

Polishing a wafer mid-build to near-perfect flatness — grinding as a precision science.

M20

Metallization & BEOL

The multi-storey copper highway built above the transistors so billions of them can talk.

M21

Capstone: a chip, start to finish

The whole flow in one sitting — and you write your own build plan for a simple chip, like a real traveler.

Part D — Measure, Test & Yield

M22

Metrology & inspection

Measuring what you can't see — how a fab knows, at every step, whether it's winning.

M23

Test & yield

Wafer maps, good die, bad die — and why yield is the single number a fab lives and dies by.

M24

SPC & quality systems

Control charts, drift, and the discipline of catching problems before they become excursions.

M25

Fab operations

How a factory that never sleeps actually runs — lots, queues, bottlenecks, and the people behind them.

Part E — Beyond the Wafer

M26

Packaging & OSAT

A bare die is useless. Dicing, bonding, moulding, testing — the half of the industry India is building first.

M27

SiC & GaN power semiconductors

The materials behind EVs, fast chargers and the grid — taught from years on a SiC line.

Part F — India & the Road Ahead

M28

The India landscape

Who is building what, where — fabs, ATMP, the supply chain — read clearly, without the hype.

M29

Careers & the road in

The roles inside this industry and what each one actually does all day — so you understand the landscape you're stepping into.

Course fee for the full 29-module live cohort is revealed at the Masterclass — along with an attendee-only early enrollment window.

What college never taught you about how chips are made.