From all-round academic master to chief scientist - Chapter 236 Win Ma
The workshop assembly line begins to operate. First of all, everyone is naturally concerned about the purification speed.
Piles of sand that have been initially filtered are put into the electric arc furnace. The temperature in the electric arc furnace has reached as high as two thousand degrees Celsius. It also contains coke, which is also used to treat impurities.
However, since Lin Xiao is optimizing the production process, various steps naturally have his new designs. The structure inside the electric arc furnace has been transformed, and there is now a honeycomb-like structure inside. Structure can make the entire response more complete and faster.
Of course, just such a structure is obviously not enough. This honeycomb-like structure is also a structure customized by Lin Xiao based on the internal structure of their electric arc furnace, and then based on physical and chemical reaction mechanisms after calculation.
And his structure can make the internal reaction more complete, allowing the internal coke to more completely take away two oxygen ions from the silica such as sand.
The people present looked at the electric arc furnace in front of them. Even if they were standing at a distance, they seemed to be able to feel the temperature inside.
“How long does it take to bake this?”
Yu Jiancheng couldn’t help but ask.
“Three hours.” Lin Xiao said.
“Only three hours?”
Yu Jiancheng was immediately shocked, “We used to have to burn each stove for four or five hours.”
In this case, wouldn’t the firing speed be directly increased by 20%-25%?
This kind of improvement is not a big improvement.
Lin Xiao smiled and said: “As long as my calculations are OK, there must be no problem.”
At this time, a process design engineer next to him couldn’t help but asked: “Professor Lin, can you tell me the principle behind it?”
This process design engineer is called Lu Zhang, who is a process design engineer in the silicon industry. The original process of this production line, including the purification process, was also designed by this engineer.
Now that Lin Xiao has optimized these processes, of course he, the engineer, has to come and take a look.
Lin Xiao glanced at Lu Zhang, smiled slightly, and uttered two words: “Magnetic field.”
Everyone around him couldn’t help but be stunned.
magnetic field?
Lu Zhang was also puzzled: “Why a magnetic field?”
“Our electric arc furnace is smelted by the high temperature generated by the electrode arc, so these arcs can naturally generate a magnetic field inside.”
“The magnetic field can affect internal reactions.”
Hearing what Lin Xiao said, Lu Zhang was confused for a moment, and then showed a shocked expression.
“You mean that by controlling the internal magnetic field, you increased the reaction rate and made the internal reaction more complete?”
“Yes.”
Lin Xiao nodded.
The high temperature inside the electric arc furnace comes from discharge. The arc generated by the electrode will cause the emergence of magnetic fields. Generally speaking, these magnetic fields will always have some influence on the internal reactions.
The essence of chemical reaction is the transfer of internal electrons. The reaction in the electric arc furnace is the redox reaction of silicon dioxide and carbon at high temperature, ultimately forming elemental silicon and carbon monoxide. The reaction equation can probably be written by a junior high school student.
In the process, the magnetic field generated by the arc will affect the electron migration process during the chemical reaction.
It’s just that in the past, designers generally didn’t consider this problem. After all, it only needs to be able to respond fully. Although the magnetic field generated by the arc can have a certain impact on the reaction, because a chaotic system has been formed internally, the magnetic field is everywhere. Under the offset of the direction, its effect can be ignored, and then through a longer reaction, the first step of the rough refining process can be completed.
However, Lin Xiao did not choose this traditional method. Instead, he chose to directly change the influence process of the magnetic field by changing the internal structure. He used the honeycomb structure to allow the arc to be affected by the honeycomb structure, so the magnetic field generated by the arc That’s it for sure.
Then he counted all the particles participating in the reaction inside, and based on the statistical results, he calculated how to use this controlled magnetic field to promote the rate of chemical reactions. In addition, he could also control the internal opposite ions to approach each other, thus making the reaction more complete. .
From these results, he was able to build this honeycomb-shaped structure.
Moreover, there can only be one honeycomb structure built by the same type of electric arc furnace. If different electric arc furnaces want to copy it, unless they can do it again according to Lin Xiao’s calculation ideas, it will obviously not be possible. Such a result can only be a waste of effort.
But obviously, Lin Xiao’s calculation idea only exists in his mind. If anyone else wants to reverse it, they must be at least half as good as him in mathematics, chemistry, and physics.
And you have to speak professionally.
As for such people, are there any in this world…
Lin Xiao declined to comment and should be more modest.
Lu Zhang, who was next to him, was shocked by Lin Xiao’s confirmation just now.
Accelerating the rate of internal chemical reactions through the magnetic field inside the electric arc furnace… Is this what people on earth can do now?
But thinking about Lin Xiao’s illustrious reputation, so many things that sound a bit incredible have been accomplished by Lin Xiao, just controlling the internal magnetic field of an electric arc furnace…
Doesn’t it sound that high-end?
Lu Zhang looked at Yu Jiancheng next to him, and suddenly wanted to tell him that he wanted to resign and study under Lin Xiao. Although he was in his forties and more than twenty years older than Lin Xiao, he was not an accomplished person. As a teacher, there is no shame in studying under a top scientist like Lin Xiao.
But after thinking about his family and the house he bought with a loan in Shanghai, he gave up the idea.
“Okay, we still have to wait three hours for this. Let’s go check the polishing first.”
At this time, Lin Xiao’s voice reminded the people present.
Everyone came to their senses and realized this.
After all, the furnace would still burn for three hours, and they couldn’t wait here for three hours, so they quickly went to the polishing machine where the polishing process was taking place.
Luo Ming looked at the polishing machine. It was the last time he came here.
That time he saw that with the addition of the new polishing disk, their polishing accuracy reached 4nm, and this time, they had a new polishing liquid. According to Lin Xiao, this could improve their polishing accuracy. Upgraded to 2nm.
He was already looking forward to this.
There was no long wait, because they had stored some unpolished silicon wafers before, so this time they could put these unpolished silicon wafers on for experiments.
As the machine is running, the planetary polishing process of the polishing machine is operating again, and liquid can be seen overflowing on both sides. These liquids are their new polishing liquid, which is composed of silicon powder and sodium hydroxide, and also contains There are some other substances that account for a small proportion, but can also deal with the polishing process.
CMP polishing refers to chemical mechanical polishing. As the name suggests, there are both chemical polishing and mechanical polishing, of which chemical polishing is performed by the polishing fluid.
The sodium hydroxide component can react with the uneven surface of the wafer to make the surface flatter, while the silicon powder can continue to gradually wear away the internal unevenness during friction.
In this process, the proportion of these two substances is a key issue.
Excellent matching ratio also greatly improves the polishing effect.
Lin Xiao obtained the internal composition and proportion of this polishing fluid from the system, which is undoubtedly a very excellent proportion. In addition, it also matches well with the grinding disc material. When the two phases are matched, their polishing efficiency can reach an extreme level. high degree.
In this way, as time slowly passed, the first batch of silicon wafers came out, and then they quickly took these silicon wafers to the laser interferometer to measure and determine their surface accuracy.
It didn’t take long for the results to come out.
“The average surface accuracy has reached 2nm! A few have reached 1nm!”
The surveyor announced this exciting news, and many people in the production line workshop cheered.
Luo Ming’s face also showed an excited look.
Unexpectedly, Professor Lin said 2nm is 2nm, there was no ambiguity at all!
In this way, with this new polishing fluid, the service life of their polishing discs can also be improved!
This can also reduce costs.
Thinking of this, he became more and more excited.
In this case, within half a year, China will be able to easily occupy an important position in the world’s silicon wafer production.
At the same time, this will also become a key node that China occupies in the semiconductor industry chain!
And one year later, they will have the opportunity to occupy half of the world market. Three years later, the world will only know that silicon wafers are made in China, but not in Japan!
In addition, polishing discs and polishing fluids will also become their important output products. Of course, such good products must first meet domestic demand, and then sell them abroad when there is spare capacity.
Thinking of this, Luo Ming became more and more happy.
Then, he held Lin Xiao’s hand tightly and said, “Professor Lin, thank you for your efforts!”
Lin Xiao smiled and waved his hands and said, “What are you talking about? Each of us has contributed.”
“But it’s obviously Professor Lin who has paid the most.” Yu Jiancheng, who was next to him, also came up, rubbed his hands and said, “Professor Lin, look at your polishing fluid, let’s…”
Lin Xiao smiled and said: “The polishing fluid also needs to build a factory, so you don’t have to worry, but we will definitely satisfy your company first.”
Of course, we must also avoid making the silicon industry too big and prevent its appetite from growing.
This process requires support for more domestic manufacturers.
Only by working together and competing together can we make the domestic industry more dynamic.
Just like Japan’s silicon wafers can occupy a large share of the world, it is because of internal competition.
Of course, we must also prevent healthy competition from turning into vicious involution.
This is especially common in China.
Although China is known as the world’s factory, and various factories receive countless orders from foreign manufacturers, there are too many homogeneous factories without technology, which causes these factories to fall into price competition in order to compete for these orders. of involution.
Price involution means using lower and lower prices to grab orders from abroad. If there are no orders, the factory will close down, so profits will become lower and lower, and workers’ wages will also become lower and lower.
It is difficult to solve this situation, but this is also because these factories do not have real technology.
As a high-tech industry, silicon wafer fabs obviously cannot be involved. This is a problem that is both necessary and necessary.
Therefore, we cannot support too many manufacturers in the future.
Of course, this issue is not something Lin Xiao needs to consider now. Someone will consider it in the future.
He no longer paid attention to the polishing here and said: “Okay, let’s take a look at our purification effect later. Then we can look forward to our final production efficiency in ten days.”
“good!”
People responded one after another, and after waiting for another two hours, they returned to the electric arc furnace they had seen before.
After three hours of high-temperature reaction, the reaction inside is basically very complete.
Then, the silicon inside was poured out, and after cooling down, it was transferred to another place for re-purification, that is, the silicon was refined with hydrogen chloride, and then more pure polysilicon was obtained using chemical vapor deposition. It is silicon with a purity of eleven-nine, which can be called a pure substance.
Lin Xiao also made changes to this step.
It is also an adjustment to the vapor deposition method.
The vapor deposition method introduces two gaseous raw materials into a reaction chamber for reaction, and finally forms a new material, which is deposited on the surface of the wafer.
There are many factors that affect the final reaction, including the pressure in the reaction chamber, the temperature of the wafer, the flow rate of the gas, the distance of the gas through the wafer, etc., which will all affect the final purity.
Lin Xiao once again returned to his old business and came up with his comprehensive calculation of the chaotic system, and finally calculated a more accurate parameter value for their vapor deposition process.
This way, they can more easily extract pure polysilicon.
Of course, this method is relatively straightforward, and Lu Zhang can see it, so he has no problem with it. However, the method is too hard-core. It is probably equivalent to decomposing the prime factors of a large number. Lin Xiao can see it at a glance. , while others can only count one by one, so this method cannot be reproduced.
The next third step is to use the pulling method to pull the molten polysilicon and gradually form silicon rods.
This step is universal and Lin Xiao has not modified it. Of course, the polysilicon obtained in the first two steps is already pure enough. This step of pulling will not change the purity, so Lin Xiao does not need to think about it.
Everyone spent half a day visiting it, and the final result obviously amazed everyone.
Such a production line is among the top silicon wafer production lines in the world.
No matter in terms of production speed or yield.
“Okay, this time we will conduct trial production for ten days, and then we will test all the silicon wafers produced in the past ten days to determine our final results!”
“good!”
Everyone cheered.
So in the next ten days, their production line began to operate at full speed, and the power of almost all machines was turned to maximum.
What surprised and frustrated them was that due to Lin Xiao’s optimization of the purification process, their production speed of primary processing silicon wafers increased by more than 30%, which resulted in their polishing machine being somewhat insufficient. .
They still need to buy a few more polishing machines to maximize the productivity of this production line.
Of course, we can wait until later to discuss these things. First, they have to complete the ten days of testing.
In this way, time passed quickly.
Naturally, Lin Xiao did not stay here forever, but returned to Beijing University.
It happened to be the graduation season of senior year, and the senior students had to defend their thesis, so he also served as the defense review teacher for a while.
Although it is from Beijing University, the quality of the graduation thesis is also uneven.
Of course, if you can pass it, you can pass it. As a young man, Lin Xiao still understands these young students very well, although he is not a veteran – after all, his original undergraduate thesis could be directly published in top international journals.
However, after all, this was Beijing University, and some of the students’ papers showed a high level of quality and were praised by him.
All in all, his defense group basically passed everything they could. Except for the papers of individual students that were severely criticized by several other reviewers, he did not hold any objections.
Well, anyway, the students in his defense group were very grateful to him.
As for the students in other groups, that’s out of his control, just be happy for yourself.
In this way, time passed quickly, and ten days passed quickly.
Ten days of trial production testing ended successfully.
The final test results surprised everyone.
As long as the number of polishing machines keeps up, their production line capacity will reach the top level in the world.
At the same time, considering the cost of raw materials, electricity costs, transportation costs, etc., they will only be lower than competitors. After all, China itself has enough raw materials. Compared with Japan, which needs to import raw materials from abroad, China China is in an absolutely dominant position, and China’s industrial power unit price is also among the lowest in the world, while Japan’s power unit price is nearly twice that of the former.
All in all, China is in an advantageous position in all costs, and the world’s major chip foundries are close to China, such as TSMC and UMC in Taiwan, Samsung in South Korea, and Huaxin in Shanghai. International, Huahong Group.
Therefore, as long as they can build enough production lines, there is only one result – winning hemp.
And this news quickly attracted the attention of the above.
In just a few days, the central government issued a document and issued instructions to build high-tech silicon wafer production lines as soon as possible, provide low-interest or even interest-free loans, and stimulate relevant domestic manufacturers to build new production lines.
At this point, the clarion call for the first major attack on the semiconductor industry chain was sounded.
Among them, Lin Xiao’s Dingguang Technology Company is the “strategist” in this attack.
Defended!
Finally relieved.
In the near future, there may be some final preparations for graduation, such as a class dinner the day after tomorrow, so the update may not be stable. When everything is over, it will return to normal, and the chapters that were owed before will be made up.
Thank you for your understanding.