From all-round academic master to chief scientist - Chapter 220: Investigating the Silicon Industry, Systematic Look Down on It

Magic City.

Silicon industry, silicon wafer production plant.

Many people on the Internet believe that chips are made of sand. First of all, it is because chips are made of silicon wafers.

A major raw material for silicon wafers is sand, which can be mined directly from nature.

Very cheap.

Of course, the subsequent processing will not be cheap at all.

For a 12-inch silicon wafer, you can just go to a river dam and put a bucket of sand into it. Although this is also an ore and belongs to the country, obviously the country cannot care about you getting such a bucket, but processing it into The price of silicon wafers that can be used for chip production is as high as more than 600 yuan.

Of course, a 12-inch silicon wafer can be cut into four to five hundred mobile phone SOC chips, and the price of a chip, taking Qualcomm’s Snapdragon price as an example, is basically higher than a 12-inch silicon wafer. One or two hundred yuan, and the self-designed chips of Apple and Warwick are completely cost-priced because they are used by themselves. Of course, when calculated on their products, the price represented by the SOC chip is quite high. .

Therefore, the more advanced the technology, the higher the profits that can be obtained.

This is why science and technology are the primary productive forces.

“We expect to be able to produce 300,000 12-inch silicon wafers per month this year, which is 3.6 million for the whole year. However, there is still a big gap with foreign countries, and we do not account for much in terms of share. The country mainly imports silicon wafers from abroad. round.”

“But now we are asked to give you another production line. The monthly output of this production line is 10,000 pieces. It is very valuable. Professor Lin, please treat it well. If it doesn’t work, please call me and our company will pay to buy a new one.” return.”

In the factory, Yu Jiancheng, the general manager of Shanghai Silicon Industry, said to the people standing next to him, with complaints and grievances in his tone.

The person standing next to him was Lin Xiao.

After the establishment of Dingguang Technology Co., Ltd., under the leadership of the government, it reached cooperation with the silicon industry.

Shanghai Silicon Industry took out a 12-inch wafer production line and jointly established a Dingguang Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. with Dingguang Technology Co., Ltd., and this production line was mainly used for Lin Xiao’s research. This is why Lin Xiao now flew from Shangjing to Beijing. Come here.

As for General Manager Yu, the grievance lies here. As the first company in China’s silicon industry to break China’s 12-inch 0 output, they are also a state-owned enterprise, with both merit and hard work. At the same time, they inherit the tradition of state-owned enterprises. It is losing money every year, and now it is directly branching off a production line worth ten figures, which of course hurts.

Hearing Yu Jiancheng’s words, Lin Xiao just smiled without getting angry. He just said, “You won’t regret it in the future.”

However, there was another person next to Lin Xiao who was dissatisfied with Yu Jiancheng’s words and said directly: “Professor Lin is a top scientist. If you don’t believe Professor Lin, go report it to the superiors. How can we make progress if we don’t want to give anything?”

This person’s name is Luo Ming, who is now the general manager of Dingguang Technology Company and is mainly responsible for the company’s administrative management.

Lin Xiao is the chairman of the company, but it is obviously impossible for him to manage the company, so Luo Ming was arranged to take charge of this job.

Of course, he also has another identity, that is, he is a loyal fan of Lin Xiao.

Of course you will be dissatisfied when you hear someone questioning your idol.

However, when Lin Xiao heard what Luo Ming said, she reached out her hand to stop him in confusion: “Luo Ming, don’t say that, we and Mr. Yu are also collaborators.”

“It’s okay. Mr. Luo is right. If you want to make progress, you have to make sacrifices.”

Yu Jiancheng waved his hand and said.

If their silicon wafer technology wants to improve, they will definitely need to pay. This sentence is correct. He also knows that cooperating with Lin Xiao is to optimize their production lines and see if they can improve the yield rate and production speed.

But the boss can gamble, but he is not willing to gamble. Whether the company is well managed will still have an impact on his performance. The most important thing is that although they are a state-owned enterprise, there are also some private shareholders in the company, and these private shareholders do not know how to pay. Lin Xiao explains the purpose of a production line.

So it is conceivable that these private shareholders will be very angry after learning about this matter. They will inevitably have to talk to him when the time comes. Although he is not afraid, it will still be a bit troublesome.

Of course, in fact, it is entirely possible to hire Lin Xiao as a research expert in the name of the silicon industry. However, because Lin Xiao said that he did not want his research to be affected by his partners, the above made a “one-size-fits-all” decision and cut this production line directly to Without him, he also has dominant control over the new Dingguang Semiconductor Technology Company.

This can be considered the excellence of China’s system. You can do anything regardless of cost, and now there is no cost loss at all. It’s almost like a left-hand thing versus a right-hand thing.

Lin Xiao said: “Let’s look at it from beginning to end, and then tell me what our main problems are at the moment.”

“Okay.” Yu Jiancheng nodded, and then led Lin Xiao to look at their first step.

The first step is to drive trucks carrying sand into the factory to purify and refine the sand.

After this process, large pieces of pure polysilicon will be obtained. The purity of these polysilicon has basically reached 99.999999999%. After that, these polysilicon are smelted, and then a rod is slowly pulled, which is the silicon rod, and the silicon rod is polished. , cut, and then polished, it becomes a silicon wafer.

This is the entire process flow, and the details determine the yield and production efficiency.

“We still have some problems in purification, and the other key is polishing. Our ultra-precision polishing machines are all imported from Japan, and they are not the most advanced ones. They don’t sell the most advanced ones to us, so other people’s polishing machines are not as good as others. We were three or four times faster.”

“Basically these two key questions.”

“Our problems mainly arise in…”

As Yu Jiancheng talked about their key issues, they also walked from the refining room to the smelting room. In the smelting room, the silicon rod was produced, a 1.5-meter-long, 12-inch large rod.

Because silicon is a semimetal, its color is the same as that of metal, except that it is grayer.

Until finally, they came to the final polishing machine.

“This is it, and it is also our most critical issue. If we want to process the silicon wafer to the accuracy we want, our polishing disc is not advanced enough, so we can only polish it for a while, but we also have to worry about the thermal expansion of the disc after grinding for a long time. Making accuracy worse.”

Yu Jiancheng said.

Lin Xiao asked: “Is your polishing fluid a traditional silica colloid?”

“Yes.”

Yu Jiancheng nodded.

“I see.”

Lin Xiao said no more.

“Luo Ming, go back to the hotel.”

“good.”

Luo Ming responded immediately.

“Mr. Yu, before my research begins, you can still use this production line, and the produced wafers will be handed over to your company for sale. But after I want to officially use it, this production line will It’s going to stop.”

“OK.”

Yu Jiancheng nodded.

However, compared to the direct loss of a production line, this output can only be considered as comfort.

So he still said: “Professor Lin, I still hope you can succeed. If you really succeed, it will be no problem even if we give you half of the production line.”

Lin Xiao smiled and said, “Just wait for the good news.”

If he succeeds, the output will be directly increased by three or four times. Even if the production line is given to him half, the output of the silicon industry will still be doubled.

Of course, everything depends on the final result.

Afterwards, Lin Xiao and Luo Ming left the factory, taking with them, of course, a USB flash drive that contained all the information on the 12-inch silicon wafer production process in the Shanghai Silicon Industry.

Simply coming here to take a look is obviously not enough, and complete information is also indispensable.

After returning to the hotel, Lin Xiao said: “Then let’s go back to Beijing tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Luo Ming nodded, and couldn’t help but ask: “So, Professor Lin, do you have any ideas about silicon wafers?”

Lin Xiao smiled and said: “This is a question that requires more thinking. If you ask it now, I have nothing to answer you.”

“Oh fine.”

Luo Ming had no choice but to nod.

Lin Xiao waved his hand and returned to his room.

Thinking back on the information we got today, the first thing is to refine the problem.

If the polishing problem is a hardware problem, the purification problem is a software problem.

Everyone in the industry knows the truth. Sand is silica. Let it react with carbon to obtain silicon ingots. Then the silicon ingots react with hydrochloric acid to generate high-purity trichlorosilane, and then electricity is applied to precipitate polycrystalline silicon.

In this process, how the process avoids impurities is tested.

Regarding this, Lin Xiao can use his good “take” principle. Through asking for things in kind, he already knows how a silicon wafer factory in Japan performs purification.

That Japanese silicon wafer factory is considered the best, and their purification method is still very good.

Of course, copying is not Lin Xiao’s character. After so many months of thinking, he has come up with a better plan, which can increase the purification speed by about 10%.

However, when it comes to the hardware issue of polishing, the “use” principle cannot be used. After all, it is certainly not a problem for local Japanese companies to buy top-notch polishing machines.

“So I have two directions now.”

“First, develop a new grinding disc material, and second, develop a new polishing fluid.”

Polishing accuracy is tested by material issues. At the same time, grinding disc and polishing fluid are indispensable.

For example, the thermal expansion coefficient of the grinding disc material must be accurate. If the grinding disc material expands due to friction and heat, it will obviously affect the final polishing accuracy.

The polishing fluid not only dissipates heat to the grinding disc, but also uses the small particles of internal polishing powder and the protrusions measured in nanometers on the surface of the material for polishing. After all, the final chip is engraved on a process measured in nanometers.

After a short period of thinking, Lin Xiao finally made a choice: “Grab it with both hands, and be hard with both hands.”

In particular, the polishing process is not only used for polishing silicon wafers. In the future, the optical lenses of photolithography machines also need to innovate the polishing process.

In the past, under the boasts of the media, carbon-based chips seemed to have become a new area where China could achieve overtaking in the chip field. However, it is obvious that the threshold of polishing process alone is enough to continue to prevent China from thinking about engaging in carbon-based chips. base chip.

Therefore, polishing technology is also an area where foreign countries impose sanctions on China.

It is imperative to achieve breakthroughs in this field.

He opened the system panel and looked at his remaining truth points.

【283.5】

A pretty high number.

Later, in the process of solving various problems with the lithography machine, he will definitely encounter some problems. If Lin Xiao really can’t solve them, he will consider using truth points.

Of course there are so many truth points that need to be used.

Of course, he now also wants to know how many truth points are needed to solve his problem so that he can be mentally prepared.

“The system is a combination of polishing abrasives and polishing fluid that can increase the polishing rate of silicon wafers by five times and stabilize the surface accuracy at around 1nm. At the same time, the cost cannot exceed at least twice the current price. How many truth points are needed?”

“Based on the host’s civilization level and the host’s overall ability, 10 truth points are required.”

Lin Xiao was stunned: “What? Only 10 truth points?”

Is it actually so cheap?

He now has nearly 300 truth points, and these 10 truth points are nothing at all!

“System, you actually look down on the polishing process so much?”

System: “This requirement does not require a breakthrough in finding the truth. It is just a matter of permutation and combination of various relevant knowledge of the host’s civilization, so only 10 truth points are needed.”

Lin Xiao: “…Okay.”

“Then you might as well just give it to me.”

system;”……”

No reply.

Lin Xiao thought for a moment, and then asked: “What if it is an optical lens polishing disc material and polishing fluid with an accuracy of 50-100pm-rms?”

System: “11 truth points are needed.”

Lin Xiao’s eyes gradually lit up.

Only 11 truth points? !

The requirements for the optical lens grinding disc of the photolithography machine are obviously greater than the requirements for the silicon wafer grinding disc, and the result is only 11 truths.

“System, this is the first time I realize you are so cute!”

Although the system does not pay attention to these technologies that humans on earth already have, and has a completely “disdainful” attitude, it is great news for him.

Because this means that he will be able to help China break through sanctions imposed by almost all countries in the world at a lower cost!

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help laughing.

He wants China to create their own cutting-edge chips in at least the next few years!

“It’s a breakout anyway. Which direction is not a breakout? Let’s start with the polishing process to complete the first breakout.”

Then, he spent 10 truth points to directly exchange grinding disc materials and polishing fluid materials for silicon wafers.

The next moment, countless knowledge emerged in his mind.