  Etched gallium arsenide wafer.
Unlike all my other integrated circuit wafers, this one is incredibly thin. Watch the rotation video to see how delicate it is (and in fact it's cracked in several places, though it's still hanging together, implying that the metallization layers are strong enough to keep it intact even though the substrate is broken).
Remarkably, you can actually see the etching of the circuits from both sides, meaning that the gallium arsenide crystal substrate must be incredibly thin. I don't know how this is done, or why.
Source: SoCal (Nevada), Inc
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 February, 2007
Text Updated: 24 February, 2007
Price: $19
Size: 4"
Composition: GaAs
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