Semiconductor fabrication equipment

thumb|A photomask. This photomask has 20 copies, also called layers, of the same circuit pattern or design. right|thumb|A schematic illustration of a photomask (top) and an IC layer printed using it (bottom) A photomask (also simply called a mask) is an opaque plate with transparent areas that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. Photomasks are commonly used in photolithography for the production of integrated circuits (ICs or "chips") to produce a pattern on a thin wafer of material (usually silicon). In semiconductor manufacturing, a mask is sometimes called a reticle.

FOUP (an acronym for front-opening unified pod or front-opening universal pod) is a specialized plastic carrier designed to hold silicon wafers securely and safely in a controlled environment, and to allow the wafers to be transferred between machines for processing or measurement.