Technological Hegemony

Wen Chengling followed Luo Jia to leave the office and came to the third floor of the optics department.

There, Wen Chengling saw a machine, a verified prototype, and the model was the first generation of ultralithography.

"Is this a lithography machine?"

Wen Chengling stopped and asked in confusion, while showing a shocked expression.

Commercial models of lithography will be packaged, and this is the original machine, so the internal components are exposed. Through the floor glass, you can see at a glance.

Wen Chengling was shocked by the design of this machine. It is very large, with up to six machines, three of which are measuring machines and the other three are standard exposure machines.

More machines can increase the efficiency of the lithography machine and produce more silicon wafers per hour.

However, at the same time as increasing the number of machines, higher requirements are also placed on the mechanical structure and the shock absorption capacity of the machine. The degree of difficulty increases geometrically. Therefore, there are only two machines on most lithography machines.

The lithography machine is the crown of the semiconductor field and needs a dust-free environment. At this moment, Luo Jia was standing outside the laboratory, separated by a layer of glass.

"Should you go in and have a look?" Luo Jia asked.

"Is it really okay?" Wen Chengling looked slightly excited, looking very excited.

"Of course, let's change the dustproof clothing." Luo Jia said with a smile.

When Wen Chengling was studying and working in North America, Sino-US relations were not as tense as they are now, so he knew the goods. In Stanford University's laboratory, he had seen many cutting-edge technologies in the optical field.

Today, North American has not allowed Huaxia students to study in key technology fields to prevent technology leakage. Semiconductors, life sciences, and aerospace are all prohibited fields.

However, although Wen Chengling is well-informed, he has never seen such an exaggerated lithography machine design. One machine can be fully automated on six machines at the same time. The efficiency should be very high.

While putting on white dust-proof clothing, Wen Chengling secretly thought that in the history of science and technology in the world, there has never been a lack of brilliant ideas. However, turning ideas into reality is very difficult. The first generation of Star Technology should still use For verification, the degree of completion should not be too high.

To what extent is this lithography machine difficult?

Only one company in the world can do EUV, which is Dutch ASML.

In the UV era, there were hundreds of companies around the world in the field of lithography machines. At that time, it was really full of flowers.

However, the good times did not last long. With the introduction of deep ultraviolet light technology, more than a hundred companies that originally manufactured lithography machines have been sharply reduced to three. Except Canon, Nikon, and ASML, all other companies have been eliminated.

From this, it is not difficult to see how severe a reshuffle will be brought to the industry by a technological advancement.

Everyone is dead, and the three living households are full of money. They eat hot pots and sing songs, and a lot of banknotes come naturally. Life should not be too comfortable.

Unfortunately, a few years later, as semiconductor technology continues to evolve, deep ultraviolet lithography is gradually becoming inadequate.

So the second round of technical competition began in the field of lithography, and the result of this technical competition was that Canon and Nikon were out, and ASML of the Netherlands became the final winner.

The only super monster in the world capable of manufacturing extreme ultraviolet EUV lithography machine was born!

Such fierce competition is simply terrible!

You know, Nikon and Canon are by no means vegetarian, they are the most powerful optical companies in the world.

Speaking of the two of them, ordinary people will immediately think of digital cameras, various lenses and other civilian products, but Nikon and Canon's most powerful and profitable is not the civilian field, but medical equipment.

When you go to the hospital and spend a thousand dollars to take a CT, the equipment used is likely to be made by Canon or Nikon, otherwise it is Ricoh, Siemens, Hitachi.

The price of a CT device is as high as tens of millions of yuan. In Huaxia alone, there are tens of thousands of CT devices, all of which come from imports. Guess how much money the neon medical equipment giant has made from Huaxia over the years.

Besides, you don't have to buy a CT machine. The supporting software, equipment maintenance, and various consumables also cost money from Neon people.

All in all, Canon and Nikon are extremely powerful companies, and they are still fiercely defeated by the Dutch ASML in the field of optics. It is enough to see that the threshold of this industry is not high, but high in the sky.

The Dutch ASML are not unknown, their predecessor is the famous Philips Optics, the objective lens they use comes from the world's largest bull in the field of lenses, Carl Zeiss, Germany.

It can be said that assembling the whole of Europe, plus some North American forces, came up with the monster ASML.

In the past, ASML had no rivals until Xingchen Technology emerged.

Luo Jia was whimsical and decided to overtake the curve, bypass the first three generations of core technology consisting of ultraviolet, deep ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet, and directly enter the fourth generation of the photolithography machine, an ultra-ultraviolet hybrid laser. Man can never understand.

Uh ~

Wen Chengling was thinking, and the sealed door of the laboratory suddenly opened in front of him.

He smiled and said to Luo Jia seriously before entering the laboratory: "General Luo, my specialty is laser, and I am confident that I can handle the light source of the lithography machine, but you should also know that a lithography machine is only It's not enough to have a light source. I can't do anything else with thousands of other core components. "

This is a vaccination for Luo Jia. What he said means that I can help you get out the ultra-ultraviolet laser, but I can't do anything other than laser, depending on the strength of Xingchen Technology.

Luo Jia just nodded and smiled, and said nothing.

Two people quickly came to this machine, Luo Jia said lightly, "This is our first generation machine. It is divided into 13 major structures, which are laser generator, beam corrector, energy controller, beam shape. Adjusters, shutters, energy detectors, mask plates, mask tables, objectives, measuring tables, exposure tables, closed frames, magnetic suspension vibration reduction. "

Luo Jia pointed at the machine and introduced the complex composition.

Although listening to the name seems simple, even if you think about it with your heels, you can understand that as the crown of the semiconductor industry, how can it be simple.

Take the objective lens of this lithography machine, if you think it is something like a SLR lens, it is completely wrong.

The objective lens used by ASML's EUV lithography machine is up to one meter eighty-four and has a width of nearly seventy centimeters. It was jointly manufactured by the German optical giant Carl Zeiss Group ~ www.wuxiahere.com ~ and laser giant Aachen Group.

How much is the objective lens?

Sorry, no matter how much Luo Jia spends, I can't buy this objective lens.

From a cost perspective, the cost of this set of objectives should be around $ 10 million, and its complexity and accuracy are enough to be written into the history of optical development.

What Luo Jia showed to Wen Chengling was just such a thing. It was huge and sophisticated, full of science fiction movie-like futurism.

And ASML's EUV is the third generation, Luo Jia is the fourth generation, ultra-violet light, the technical complexity is even higher.

"You have already achieved this level !?" Wen Chengling's eyes widened with excitement and made an incredible sound.

The distance was just a short distance away, and it was separated by glass, so I didn't see it too clearly, and thought it was a good product.

Now when he walks into the dust-free laboratory, Wen Chengling suddenly realizes that the completion of this fourth-generation lithography machine is already so high!