Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 245: The Product of National Strength

In early July, Gulf Technology once again gave Xu Shenxue good news, saying that it had developed a prototype of the DUV dry lithography machine and was preparing for the first power-on test.

After receiving the news, Xu Shenxue canceled other plans and went to Gulf Technology that day.

After arriving at Gulf Technology, Wang Daolin, with a happy face, took Xu Shenxue to visit their latest research and development results: a completely self-developed DUV dry lithography machine.

"From the light source system to the objective lens, and then to the machine, all subsystem integration and some key components are provided by sister companies under Fairy Mountain Holdings, Liuhe Investment, and Zhiyun Technology. In addition, the many components required behind these subsystems are supplied by more than a thousand other domestic companies in addition to our own sister companies."

"The number of companies directly or indirectly involved in the research and development of this project has reached nearly 2,000, with more than 100 research institutes of various types and more than 10 famous universities also participating!"

As Wang Daolin spoke, he was even more excited and sighed: "This is truly a top-notch device that can only be produced with the efforts of the whole country!"

"We have achieved what only the entire Western system of Europe, America, Japan and South Korea can do together, relying on our own strength. This is more difficult than simply developing a lithography machine."

"If we rely on the global industrial chain, although the technology is very difficult to develop, all we have to do is system integration. Although it is difficult, there will not be any generation gap. I dare to tell our ASML component suppliers that we can develop DUV immersion lithography machines and even advance to EUV lithography machines in a year at most!"

"But we don't have these global suppliers, so we have to find many things ourselves in China. If we can't find them, we have to develop them from scratch!"

“The difficulty of fully localizing DUV lithography equipment is incredibly high!”

“Many things have to be developed from raw materials!”

As Wang Daolin was speaking, Cao Xingchen, the head of the R&D department of Nanjiang Technology, also chimed in: "Not bad!"

"Our company is engaged in the production of objective lenses. For the objective lenses of this DUV lithography machine, we have completely redesigned everything from materials to processing technology!"

"We are led by Nanjiang Technology, and we have also brought in a large number of research institutes and cooperative enterprises. We have launched dozens of new material research projects at the same time, testing various materials one by one and making targeted improvements to the materials."

"It took more than two years to finally come up with usable materials!"

“But it’s not enough to just get the materials, you still have to process them!”

“This processing is more difficult!”

When Cao Xingchen spoke, he also recalled the previous R&D difficulties and couldn't help but sigh: "The precision of the lenses required for the lithography machine is very high, usually it needs to reach one-fiftieth of the wavelength. For example, the wavelength of the light source of our DUV dry lithography machine is 193 nanometers, and one-fiftieth is nanometers!"

"This kind of precision processing is beyond the imagination of ordinary people!"

"When we at NanGuang previously produced I-line lithography lenses and KRF light source lenses, we used some existing domestic technologies, such as small grinding head polishing and magnetorheological polishing."

"These existing technologies are not enough to process the lenses needed for DUV lithography machines!"

"And it is very difficult to achieve greater breakthroughs in the original technical route and reach the level of manufacturers such as Zeiss and Nikon."

"In order to solve this problem, our R&D team developed existing technologies while developing new technologies. One of the new technologies has been rapidly developed, which is ion beam polishing technology."

When talking about the ion beam polishing technology, Cao Xingchen became very excited:

"Although this technology is difficult to develop and has cost us a lot of manpower and resources, the effect is really good after it is actually made!"

"Using this technology, we can easily process lenses that meet the needs of DUV dry lithography machines. Even after further improvements in the subsequent process, it will not be a problem to produce lenses for DUV immersion lithography machines!"

Although both DUV dry light lithography machines and immersion lithography machines use ARF light sources, the wavelength of the light source of the immersion lithography machine evolves to 134 nanometers after being refracted by ultrapure water.

Because although the light source systems of the two seem to be the same, the requirements for the objective lens and other subsystems are different.

Cao Xingchen continued: "If we continue to work on this technology, we will be able to produce lenses with higher precision that can be used for EUV lithography machines in the future!"

The technological upgrade of optical technology from generation to generation requires not only the continuous upgrade of the light source system, but also the cooperation of many other subsystems, and the objective lens is the most critical part of this series of subsystems.

The above two points are the most core subsystems that affect lithography accuracy.

Of course, other aspects, such as machine alignment, cannot be bad either.

Xu Shenxue listened to these words, and then flipped through the technical manual in his hand. In order to take care of Xu Shenxue, who doesn't understand technology, this technical manual introduces the basic situation of the DUV dry lithography machine in front of him and the situation of each subsystem in a simple and easy-to-understand way.

That is to say, Xu Shenxue had always given himself a B-level scientific research quota, and when he had nothing to do, he would often study and look through some technologies, especially technical information in the semiconductor field.

Therefore, we can more or less understand the various technical parameters described in this technical data and what they mean!
Just as Wang Daolin said: This is a top-level equipment that can only be produced with the efforts of the whole country!

And to be precise, at present, the only country that can truly produce lithography machines on its own is China. Because of the global division of labor, other countries, even the United States, cannot produce lithography machines alone.

Taking the objective lens as an example, the leader is Nanjiang Technology, but the research and development of materials is actually carried out in collaboration with dozens of research institutes.

Without so many material research institutes and universities cooperating with you to work on this thing, Nanjiang Technology’s own few material R&D personnel would not be able to develop it even in ten years!

The same is true for lens processing. Although the processing is done by Nanjiang Technology, many of the equipment are actually specially customized and developed by many scientific research institutes.

Among them, the core equipment, the ion beam polishing equipment, has many core components that were made in the laboratory by several top domestic scientific research institutions, a group of bigwigs and many scientific researchers.

Even though Nanjiang Technology paid money throughout the entire research and development process, there are many things that cannot be solved by simply paying money and finding people and organizations to develop the product for you.

If you want to spend money on this, you must have such a huge country, and this country must have sufficient resources.

Xu Shenxue closed the technical manual, looked at the 'big cabinet' in front of him, and sighed: "It's not easy. I have been working on it for several years. Finally, I can see the true face of this thing!"

After sighing, Xu Shenxue said to the people around him: "Everyone has worked hard!"

"Come on, let's make our big baby move. Didn't we say we were going to test it? Let me see the real stuff that represents our top industrial standards!"

Wang Daolin said: "Okay, our testing work has been prepared in advance, and we are just waiting for you, Director Xu, to come and take a look!"

HaiLan Technology also has a simple small production line for testing, which is equipped with silicon wafers and other core equipment. Although production is not feasible, testing is not a problem.

As the test started, the researchers in the dust-free laboratory also began to operate. The silicon wafers that had been prepared in the warm yellow machine room were sprayed with photoresist. After a series of operations, they were sent to the lithography machine for lithography.

After the lithography machine was started, Xu Shenxue could not actually see its internal operation process. After all, the lithography machine has very high requirements for the environment. Except for a very small number of dedicated staff who can enter after strict dust removal, ordinary outsiders are not allowed to enter. Not to mention that people cannot enter, the lithography machine has requirements for light when it is working... So the lights in the lithography machine test workshop are all warm yellow.

Because other tones of light will affect the wavelength of the light source of the lithography machine...

Chip manufacturing is the most advanced production technology of contemporary humans.

For example, the Zhiyun S303 chip has more than million transistors packed into a chip the size of a fingernail.

The technical difficulty is equivalent to carving a huge megacity, and a megacity full of people, on a chip the size of a fingernail.

This ultra-high precision processing not only has extremely stringent requirements on equipment, but also on the environment.

In order to avoid affecting the test, Xu Shenxue actually never entered the computer room from beginning to end. He just took a look through the glass from outside.

After the test began, in order to prevent external light from entering and affecting the test, the glass windows were simply blocked.

Now Xu Shenxue and a group of other people can only observe through the cameras in the laboratory in the observation room outside.

But anyway, although chip production is difficult in many ways, there is nothing earth-shattering about the actual production process.

There wasn't even much sound, let alone any vibration.

The staff on the side didn't dare to speak, fearing that the vibration caused by the sound would affect the test... although this was just unnecessary worry on their part.

However, in this critical experimental test, many people couldn't help but be more cautious.

The DUV dry lithography machine inside is the result of the hard work of countless people. How many people have worked hard for the successful birth of this lithography machine!
Now it’s time for actual testing to see our real abilities. How can we not care and be careful?
Xu Shenxue looked at the content in the camera. The entire chip production process had no human intervention and was all carried out by automated equipment.

Not long after, Wang Daolin stood up with a hint of excitement and said, "The photolithography has been successfully completed. The next few steps are to proceed with the next few processes such as resist removal, and then we can see the test results!"

Xu Shenxue nodded slightly with a calm expression!
Looking at people like Wang Daolin, they have a narrow vision and poor pattern. It's just the first photolithography process that has been completed. This is an established procedure and there's nothing surprising about it.

Soon after, as several subsequent processes were completed, Wang Daolin said: "Now that the basic process has been completed, we can use the electronic scanning mirror for observation."

It is just a photolithography test, so naturally it does not require many subsequent steps in the normal chip production process. It only requires degumming and cleaning after photolithography to be able to observe its internal structure.

Soon, the wafer was cut, and then one of the chips was sent to a special electron scanning microscope for magnified observation.

Wang Daolin explained: "The chip we used for testing is a low-process functional chip in the group, which uses a 65-nanometer process. It is just right for testing our DUV dry lithography machine!"

This test only tests the availability of the lithography machine, and does not consider issues such as yield rate, so it only needs to pass the most basic test.

Soon, the electron scanning microscope also provided images one after another, and a group of researchers checked and analyzed the nano-scale transistor circuits inside the densely packed chips on the display.

During the analysis process, you can see the smiles on the engineers' faces getting bigger and bigger.

At the end, one of the engineers couldn't help but stand up and said, "We succeeded! We succeeded! The lithography accuracy has fully met the design requirements!"

At this time, without waiting for Wang Daolin to speak, Xu Shenxue, who was originally sitting, stood up and walked over quickly.

Then I looked at the large, densely packed transistor circuit diagram on the screen that made me dizzy at first glance.

Wang Daolin followed up and said, "We finally succeeded, President Xu. We didn't let you down. We finally made this DUV dry lithography machine!"

"As long as the basic performance meets the design specifications, even if there are still some problems in the future, we can gradually improve it, gradually increase sales and yield, and then use it in actual production!"

Xu Shenxue said: "Good, very good!"

"Thank you for your hard work. I'm hosting tonight. Everyone please come. We won't leave until we're drunk!"

"Then, the project was successful, and I, Xu, had nothing left except some dirty money. All the R&D personnel involved in the project will receive three times the performance bonus for this month, and the technical backbones will receive bonuses and options!"

"In addition to the whole machine project, the R&D teams of each subsystem should also do the same!"

"Everyone who knows me knows that I, Xu Shenxue, never say empty words. I believe this bonus will satisfy many people!"

Xu Shenxue is famous for being generous with money...especially when it comes to bonuses in some key research and development areas, he is extremely generous.

Zhiyun Microelectronics developed a 32-nanometer process, and Xu Shenxue gave the R&D team a one-time bonus of more than 30 million!
The field of lithography machines is no exception. Xu Shenxue said a long time ago that the day you develop a DUV dry lithography machine will be the day you achieve financial freedom.

I dare not say how much more, but for the core technical personnel in the whole machine project and each subsystem, this time the project bonus is enough for them to buy a house and settle down in Shenzhen, the kind that can be paid in full!

As long as the product is ready, even a few hundred million in bonus would be nothing to Xu Shenxue.

Compared with the huge significance of this DUV dry lithography machine, these hundreds of millions of bonuses are nothing!
Although DUV dry lithography can only be used for 65-nanometer process, it is the precursor technology of DUV immersion lithography.

A large number of subsystems are common or can be used after improvement.

This solves the 0-1 problem. The subsequent transition from DUV dry lithography machine to DUV immersion lithography machine is the 1-9 problem.

Although 1-9 is also very difficult, with this 1 as a foundation, the subsequent work will have a goal and a clue!
With this DUV dry lithography machine, Xu Shenxue can truly imagine developing a DUV immersion lithography machine in a few years.

As long as we develop the DUV immersion lithography machine and equip it with other core equipment and consumables, we won’t have to worry about being sanctioned and blocked for many years to come.

Because the DUV immersion lithography machine uses multiple exposure technology, it is possible to produce chips equivalent to 7 nanometers.

Even more extreme, it can achieve the equivalent of a 5-nanometer chip, but the cost will be very high...

The fully independent equivalent 7-nanometer chip process technology is of great significance to Zhiyun and China.

The equivalent 5-nanometer process is of greater significance, even though its production cost is much higher than that of chips produced using EUV lithography machines with an equivalent -nanometer process, and it usually does not even have commercial value!
However, its practical significance is still significant because it solves the problem of whether or not!

The 5-nanometer, even 3-nanometer, and 2-nanometer chips made by other people's EUV lithography machines, especially AI chips, are all very good, but the problem is that you can't buy them...

At this time, if a company has chips with an equivalent five-nanometer process, especially AI chips, it can barely make up the difference. Some poorer performance is always better than no performance at all!
(End of this chapter)