Chapter 368 The Terrifying Accuracy Gap
"What?"
"Single crystal?!"
"Is it the same technology used to manufacture single-crystal blades for aircraft engines?"
Following Lin Weiguo's guidance, everyone showed an expression of sudden enlightenment.
Single crystal is an extremely special metal material with unparalleled hardness and perfect internal atomic arrangement.
Originally, this material only exists in nature and is a natural perfect crystal.
It was not until later breakthroughs in human manufacturing technology that single-crystal blades based on nickel-iron alloy were used in aircraft engines.
The aircraft engines of the Flower Country have always been less than ideal, and their service life is far inferior to that of the Eagle Country, because they lag behind in manufacturing materials such as single crystals.
Materials science is the foundation of all applied sciences. If the materials are not up to standard, the development of applied technology will be restricted.
Chen Jue was even better. He applied the technology for making fighter jet engine blades to the casing of a photolithography machine. This extravagant behavior, which was comparable to showing off wealth, stunned everyone present.
"I just wanted to give it a more protective shell, so I made a five-layer bonded single crystal material."
" It is equivalent to combining the five elements of copper, iron, nickel, aluminum and lead into one. Even if there is a nuclear explosion outside, the electromagnetic shock and nuclear radiation cannot penetrate this machine and affect the chip processing inside." Chen Jue explained calmly.
Upon hearing this, Zou Ying and Lin Weiguo couldn't help but twitch their faces.
Good job!
At present, humans have only mastered two layers of technology for nickel-iron single crystals, but you have directly reached the fifth layer.
It was just something that was done casually!
In the eyes of these technical people, this is just a show of Versailles !
"A single crystal with five layers?"
"Then if we take off this outer shell, it will be more than enough to make the outer shell of a rocket or a nuclear submarine, right?"
"This is really... too awesome!" The researchers watching were excited.
Chen Jue's brilliant move is equivalent to advancing the material science and metallurgical technology of the flower-growing family by more than fifty years!
If single crystal manufacturing technology can be popularized, wouldn't the Hua family's mechanical processing level take off explosively?
This concerns the entire country's industrial system. Whether it is military or civilian use, it cannot avoid the technological development of such basic materials.
After hearing this result, Liu Chengdong's eyes changed when he looked at Chen Jue. He thought: I originally just invited Chen Jue to build a lithography machine, but I didn't expect that he would easily make a breakthrough in the most difficult material science!
…
The crowd watching was talking about it, especially Zou Ying, the director of the base's R&D center. At this moment, it was as if his eyes were embedded in the white metal shell and he didn't want to move away at all.
If the white photolithography machine in front of them was not of great importance and had not yet been verified, Zou Ying would have already brought people to scrape some metal powder off the outer shell for material analysis and comparison.
After all, single crystals made of five metal elements are among the best on the entire earth.
"Boss, can this single crystal material be manufactured on a large scale?"
"You know, some of our brother units have a lot of debts in the field of materials science..." Liu Chengdong put away his playful smile and asked seriously.
"As long as there is enough material, it can definitely be mass-produced!"
"But the prerequisite is to find someone who has the same cultivation level as me and can provide services to you anytime and anywhere." Chen Jue glanced at the other party. With his clear mind, he naturally saw what the other party was thinking.
Although the material properties of this type of single crystal are very explosive, according to the metallurgical technology currently mastered by humans, it is basically impossible to achieve large-scale mass production.
Because this involves reshaping the metal material and then densely combining the five metal elements in layers with atomic-level precision.
Such horrific processing precision is impossible to achieve, let alone flower growers, even if the entire human society were to unite to do it.
Because currently there is only one Chen Jue who has mastered the ability of [Matter Interference].
In addition, Chen Jue was about to set off for Mars, and he certainly couldn't waste time on processing such basic materials, so he could only politely refuse.
Seeing Chen Jue’s polite refusal, Liu Chengdong blushed, scratched his head a little embarrassedly and said, “Then… forget it…”
After all, Chen Jue has helped the base many times, and no matter how deep the favor is, it should not be squandered like this.
…
Because the little incident caused by this white single crystal material only caused a momentary commotion, soon the white photolithography machine in front of them began to enter a tense verification operation state under the manipulation of Lin Weiguo and others.
You should know that a traditional EUA lithography machine consumes 30,000 kWh of electricity when working for 24 hours, and is a well-known super energy tiger in the entire industrial field!
For example, TSMC, the largest semiconductor production plant in Taiwan, consumes 14.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year. One plant is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of a city with a population of tens of millions.
With such a huge power supply, the circuit system must achieve extremely high stability.
Once voltage instability occurs, a short circuit can easily occur, damaging the precision electronic components inside the lithography machine.
The white lithography machine made by Chen Jue has a precision dozens of times higher than that of ordinary EUA lithography machines. In addition to its reduced size, the internal circuit routing has been significantly modified by Chen Jue.
It is not easy to supply electricity to this machine. For this reason, Lin Weiguo and others specially modified the transmission cables of the underground fortifications and equipped them with ultra-high voltage transmission ports.
Once the power cord is connected, huge amounts of electricity begin to be input, and a square, simple, built-in control panel lights up on the pure white body.
However, the photolithography program has not been imported into the control panel at this moment, because Chen Jue only made a bare machine. If he wants to put it into operation for tape-out, he has to import a specific EDA design program.
Fortunately, what the Institute of Optoelectronics lacks the least is chip design programs!
After discussing for a while, Lin Weiguo, under the guidance of Chen Jue, inserted a large data disk into the machine and read out a copy of the latest chip design from it.
"It really is atomic-level precision!"
"Even the parameters of the XYZ axes indicate that the maximum displacement can reach 0.1 nanometers!"
"0.1 nanometer dry lithography? I feel like I'm dreaming!" Several technicians who were accompanying the operation couldn't help but exclaim in amazement after seeing the data on the monitor.
Instead, Lin Weiguo pursed his lips bitterly.
Because the processing accuracy of 0.1 nanometers is completely beyond the upper limit of the accuracy of their chip design drawings!
You know, the current integrated circuit design drawings often contain tens of billions of transistors.
Like the latest Kirin series 9000 chip, it has both CPU and GPU functions built-in, and its number of transistors reaches more than 15 billion.
This is just using the traditional 5nm process!
Once it is increased to 0.1 nanometers, it is equivalent to increasing the processing accuracy by 50 times on the original basis.
The higher the precision of photolithography, the smaller the gaps between transistors will be, and the usable space on a chip will be almost infinitely enlarged.
With the processing accuracy increased by 50 times, the number of transistors on a single Kirin chip of the same size is not simply increased by 1×50.
Instead, it will explode exponentially!
It is possible to produce hundreds of billions or even trillions of transistors in one go!
But the problem is that although Chen Jue did develop this devilish super chip machine, there are no ready-made chip blueprints suitable for the 0.1 nanometer process.
After all, there is still a big generation gap between China and foreign countries in EDA chip design. There are very few companies and units in the country that can develop EDA drawings.
Even the Institute of Optoelectronics where Lin Weiguo works can only come up with a few chip designs worth tens of billions of dollars.
Facing the strange white machine in front of him, Lin Weiguo felt as if he had returned to the time when he had just started working and attended an interesting conversation at a large foreign semiconductor industry forum.
At the forum, Lin Weiguo met a senior executive of a foreign company. Seeing that he was a flower grower, the senior executive half-jokingly said to him in private: "You flower growers are no good! Because even if I give you all the design drawings of the EUA lithography machine, your supporting processes cannot keep up and you still can't process it."
In Lin Weiguo's eyes at the time, the generation gap in technology was like his wife running away with someone else. The feeling of powerlessness and fear filled his mind, leaving a deep impression on him.
But after decades of hard work, Lin Weiguo has long forgotten the fear of the technological gap.
Until he encountered the white lithography machine made by Chen Jue!
That feeling of powerlessness surged up from the depths of my memory again!
"Fortunately... Fortunately, this machine was made by our own people..."
Lin Weiguo comforted himself a little while sweating profusely in front of the machine. He felt that in just a short while, he had sweated more than in the entire summer.
