wafer

American  

[wey-fer] / ˈweɪ fər /

noun

1. a thin, crisp cake or biscuit, often sweetened and flavored.

2. a thin disk of unleavened bread, used in the Eucharist, as in the Roman Catholic Church.

3. a thin disk of dried paste, gelatin, adhesive paper, or the like, used for sealing letters, attaching papers, etc.

4. Medicine/Medical. a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.

5. any small, thin disk, as a washer or piece of insulation.

6. Electronics. a thin slice of semiconductor used as a base material on which single transistors or integrated-circuit components are formed.

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verb (used with object)

1. to seal, close, or attach by means of a wafer or wafers.

   to wafer a letter.

wafer British  

/ ˈweɪfə /

noun

1. a thin crisp sweetened biscuit with different flavourings, served with ice cream, etc

2. Christianity a thin disc of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist as celebrated by the Western Church

3. pharmacol an envelope of rice paper enclosing a medicament

4. electronics a large single crystal of semiconductor material, such as silicon, on which numerous integrated circuits are manufactured and then separated

5. a small thin disc of adhesive material used to seal letters, documents, etc

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verb

1. (tr) to seal, fasten, or attach with a wafer

Other Word Forms

• wafer-like adjective
• waferlike adjective
• wafery adjective

Etymology

Origin of wafer

1350–1400; Middle English wafre < Middle Dutch wafer, variant of wafel waffle ¹

Example Sentences

It takes purified silicon rocks, a good source of which is sand in North Carolina, and fashions them into the 12-inch wafers that will later be imprinted with trillions of transistors to become chips.

From The Wall Street Journal

The ingots are cut into wafers, polished and placed into special shipping containers that will carry them throughout the chip supply chain so their delicate properties aren’t ruined.

From The Wall Street Journal

Because HBM is resource-intensive—each unit needs roughly three times the semiconductor wafer capacity of standard memory—expanding supply reduces production of other memory types and drives prices higher across the sector.

From Barron's

Because HBM is resource-intensive—each unit needs roughly three times the semiconductor wafer capacity of standard memory—expanding supply reduces production of other memory types and drives prices higher across the sector.

From Barron's

Murphy said that Micron’s HBM yield is on track, referring to the amount of usable chips that come from a single wafer.

From MarketWatch

Related Words

• biscuit
• cake
• candy
• cookie
• cracker