Welcome to the third installment of Science with iFixit. This time around, we've got a helping hand from our buddies at Chipworks.

Disclaimer: there will be a lot of technical jargon being thrown around in this teardown. We'll try to succinctly explain what we can, but expect to see plenty of links to good ol' Wikipedia.

So hop on, and join us as we figure out why the A6 is so darn fly.

But first, a bit about Chipworks' equipment that makes all this possible.

Chipworks has a bona-fide ion blaster, affectionately called Ibe (short for "ion beam etching").

Ibe is used to remove layers of semiconductor devices in a controlled and selective manner with very precise and planar results.

Essentially, ion beam etching is like sandblasting a chip to remove specific layers. Instead of sand, though, Ibe uses the atoms in an ion beam to do its dirty work.

Today's semiconductor devices are constructed from dissimilar materials, like the Apple A6 which is fabricated with Samsung 32 nm HKMG (Hi dielectric K, Metal Gate) CMOS process, making this an invaluable tool.

tl;dr it's an ion blaster.

A member of the Chipworks development team sets up parameters on Ibe for the removal of the dielectrics on an advanced node chip (like the A6) where there may be up to 9 copper layers and 1 aluminum layer, as well as polysilicon and substrate layers.

Recently, Chipworks completed an addition to their de-layering lab, adding several more wet benches, fume hoods, and polishing stations.

Semiconductor doping profiles are extremely important to understanding how today’s advanced devices perform and are constructed.

Chipworks has recently brought in a new, higher resolution scanning capacitance microscope. With this new SCM they can examine the doping profiles of NMOS and PMOS devices in the A6, as well as understand how the photo cathodes in the 8 megapixel iSight camera have been doped.

Science!

Process and development technicians examine results after preparing the A6 for processing. Interim views through optical microscopes provide necessary feedback to the technicians to fine-tune adjustments in the subsequent processing to maximize results.

Next, Chipworks gets microscopically familiar with the rear-facing camera. We (along with pretty much everyone else) generally want to know who manufactures the iSight camera, and that information is hidden deep within the camera's guts.

• No secrets are hidden too deep for Chipworks. They solved this mystery in no time.

Different tasks call for different tools. If you want to look at some transistor strain, or some gate oxide thicknesses, or even crystal lattice orientation, you go for the big gun…

…the electron gun that's in the new TEM (transmission electron microscope)!

• TEMs get their high resolution from the small de Broglie wavelength of electrons. That's quantum mechanics in action!
• To make a long story short, TEM works by shooting a bunch of electrons at a piece of material, then watching the way the electrons interact with that material.

These are just some of the techniques and machinery that Chipworks employs to render all the fun images you see on their site. But just like a good magician, they can't reveal all their secrets. So let's take a look at what lurks inside the iPhone 5's chips.

The folks at Chipworks are quite fond of this phone. Directly from the horse's mouth: "This phone is full of brand new components…best Apple release since the first iPhone."

We'll be looking at the:

• Apple A6 application processor
• Apple 338S1077 Cirrus audio chip
• Murata 339S0171 Wi-Fi module
• Qualcomm MDM9615 LTE modem
• Qualcomm RTR8600 Multi-band/mode RF transceiver

Let's start by cutting into the A6 to see what drives it.

What does the top of a metal die of the A6 processor look like? To us it looks like a Wheat Thin.

So how were these photos created, you may ask? Well, we took a picture of a Wheat Thin. Chipworks opted to go the long route:

• The A6 is first decapsulated in a fuming sulfuric acid solution, heated to a temperature designed to get best results.
• Then, Chipworks engineers use a microscope to take images of the die. The die is loaded onto a servo controlled X-Y table, and focus is set and maintained by laser monitoring.
• Image coordinates are programmed into the system. The microscope moves the die automatically and takes several images, which are stitched together to create the full die photo.
• One of the machines used for the process can be seen in the third image.