Rating: 
Summary: Good basic info, but inexcusable typos and errors
Review: English is not my first language, I still find this book painful to read. It took me a weekend to munch down the top one third of this book, a biography of Seymour Cray, and six Japanese comic books. I find this book among them, the worst prepared one.With so many errors in it, I kept grabbing my hair. Many mistakes are so easy to spot, I can usually randomly filp over ten pages, and spot an error. Many of them are really serious, they really can mislead a student, if he/she lacked proper training in science. Say on one page, ozone was mistakenly printed as O2 rather than O3. There are some other unbalanced chemical formula as well. Some math formula are also poorly written or presented. Read it, but be careful. It can be a mine field.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, poorly edited, but you still have to read it
Review: English is not my first language, I still find this book painful to read. It took me a weekend to munch down the top one third of this book, a biography of Seymour Cray, and six Japanese comic books. I find this book among them, the worst prepared one. With so many errors in it, I kept grabbing my hair. Many mistakes are so easy to spot, I can usually randomly filp over ten pages, and spot an error. Many of them are really serious, they really can mislead a student, if he/she lacked proper training in science. Say on one page, ozone was mistakenly printed as O2 rather than O3. There are some other unbalanced chemical formula as well. Some math formula are also poorly written or presented. Read it, but be careful. It can be a mine field.
Rating: 
Summary: well explained description of the process of building a semi
Review: Excellent book.Complete description of the steps required to manufacture a semiconductor from initial wafer to backend assembly. Fine balance between layman and engineer. If you think that is easy, try writing a technical paper understood by the masses that isn't attacked by professionals as "too basic".
Rating:
Summary: Complete Text for Microchip Fabrication
Review: Excellent! Microchip fabrication is a fast growing industry, so it is great to know this book is up to date on all the newest technology. It takes you through every facet of fabrication. It is simplistic enough to keep your attention without compromising content. It is perfect for the student, or for people trying to get a job with a major company. It is definately a complete text which not only illustrates techniques, but explains the history and the whys behind them.
Rating:
Summary: a reader
Review: I read two previous editions of this book. When I heard the 4th edition, I cannot wait to buy one. This book is written so well that it's good for readers from inside and outside of the industry. The coverage of the new development of technology is especially useful. I also like chapter 15 very much. The author discusses the business aspects of wafer fabrication, which is not seen very many times in a tech book. The author really knows what a reader would like to learn, opposing to that a lot authors only write for themseles. It is an excellent book.
Rating: 
Summary: I was not impressed
Review: I was not at all impressed with this book. I have found more information, with more clear illustrations and samples in books that are a fraction of the cost. The author makes several mistakes throughout this book regarding the fabrication of microchips. I did not find the book to be up to date as far as current standards and practices. I highly reccomend that anyone interested in this subject find a more current book. If a person is interested in fabrication techniques from 5 years ago, then this book will fit that need. If a person wants to be knowledgeable about current methods then avoid this book like the plague. I would get my money back if I could.
Rating: 
Summary: It's Not As Bad As All That
Review: I'll be short in sweet. I've read some of the other revies. And let me tell you from a guy that is in the semiconductor industry, the grammatical mistakes are many but they are not enough to misguide you as to the theory contained within the text. Everyone in the industry knows that ozone is O3, so when the author uses O2 in some areas, it is an understanable mistake. I do wish the author would have included a little more of the math behind the industry, but he did afterall forewarn us that it was not going to be in here. So the book does what the title states, gives a practical guide to semiconductor processing.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: If you have or are in the process of getting your EE, don't bother with this book. As the title says, it's a "Practical Guide" for folks that either have an interest in the topic or wish to get a bit deeper into the issues involved in wafer and semiconductor manufacturing due to job requirements etc... it is not a text book. I would have given the book 5 stars except there are several glaring issues with this book. Given the target audience and general education level of its readers, I think some of the issues are inexcusable. Typos and grammatical errors abound in this book. The Editor at McGraw Hill must have been asleep or been so completely uninterested in the topic that they didn't bother to check. Also, there are issues with decimal point placement throughout the book. It's sufficiently technical that someone should have bothered to verify the figures before publishing. I also would like to have seen higher quality illustrations/pictures and some logic applied to their placement. This book is due for an update SOON. It positions die shifts to 180 nanometers as an up and coming event. Intel currently has 90 nanometer manufacturing up and running, with products entering the channel in 4Q03. Not to mention, graphics chip companies and their fab partners have made the shift to 130 nanometers. These process and manufacturing changes bring a whole host of new issues, challenges, opportunities and technologies to the mix. All in all, this is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Good basic info, but inexcusable typos and errors
Review: This book certainly lays out the basics of integrated circuit manufacturing methods and techniques, and does it at a level that a non-EE fellow like me can appreciate. However, the book is riddled with typos, misapplied homonyms (a "quartz vile" instead of a "quartz vial", for example), and some "facts" that are just plain wrong (copper coils for the heating elements in a resistance-heated furnace? I don't think so!). Shame on the author and the publisher for not performing a thorough proofreading of this otherwise useful text.
Rating:
Summary: Great starting point
Review: This book is clear and readable -- not your average text book. I'm making a mid-life career change from architect to patent writer for the semiconductor industry. This book has been invaluable. It's not full of a lot of formulas or theory, but it will definitely help you understand what is involved in manufacturing semiconductor devices. The only things I might ask for are 1)Better Prufreeding, and B) more pictures of the process machinery; there are a few, but the author relies mainly on diagrammatic drawings to illustrate equipment. But, that said, there are a lot of drawings and they are very well drawn (unlike some of the fuzzy drawing representations in Wolf's Vol. 1 of Semiconductor Devices for the VLSI Era. The VanZant book is way cheaper, too).
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