The raw material for wafer production is silicon, and a little further back, the raw material is silica.

In layman's terms, wafers are made of sand.

Of course, silicon ore can also be used, which is a raw material with a higher silicon content. Whether it is sand or silicon ore, it is the raw material for the manufacture and production of wafers.

The first step in wafer manufacturing is deoxidation and purification.

The sand/quartz is purified to obtain silica with a silica content of 25%. The silica is refined by an electric arc furnace, chlorinated with hydrochloric acid, and distilled to obtain crystalline silicon with a purity of more than 99%. Crystalline silicon requires a very high level of purity, which is why wafers are expensive.

Workers are loading the arc melting furnace. This raw material is naturally not sand, but silica with relatively high purity.

Tang Fei is an expert and knows that the first step in wafer production is deoxidation and purification, so he walked directly to the arc melting furnace and happened to see the workers loading.

When Wang Xingkui and the others saw Tang Fei, they greeted him one after another and greeted Tang Fei one after another.

Tang Fei glanced at the current situation and asked with great interest: "Xingkui, how are the preparations going, when will the furnace be opened for purification." ”

This is what Tang Fei is more concerned about.

As soon as production starts and the first process begins, the subsequent processes will keep up and the first wafers can be manufactured.

At present, wafers are in short supply in the international market.

No, in Tang Fei's memory, it seems that this thing has always been in short supply. What Tang Fei remembers most is that it seems that in 2016, the global shortage of wafers has led to a high price of memory modules and SSDs. For a while, the wafers in the international market were directly out of stock.

To put it simply, a wafer refers to a silicon wafer with an integrated circuit, which is called a wafer because its shape is round.

Wafers are widely used in the field of electronics and digital. Memory modules, SSDs, CPUs, graphics cards, mobile phone memory, mobile phone fingerprint chips, etc., it can be said that wafers are indispensable for almost all electronic digital products.

In the future, the global wafer shortage often occurs, which not only leads to the price increase of memory modules and SSDs, but also leads to the entire field of electronic digital products has been very seriously affected. You can see the importance of wafers.

Tang Fei plans to manufacture his first wafers as soon as possible and bring them to the market.

Seeing that the boss asked about the production preparations, Wang Xingkui said: "All preparations are basically ready, the preparation of process data and personnel training are all completed, the workers can produce according to the process we have formulated, and the first batch of raw materials has also begun to be loaded into the furnace and immediately start smelting, and the first thing is deoxidation and purification." ”

Tang Fei was interested, and he was full of interest next to him, watching everyone busy. Under the guidance of the technicians, the first batch of raw materials was loaded into the furnace and the inspection was correct, Wang Xingkui came over to ask for instructions.

"Boss, should we open the furnace early tomorrow morning for deoxidation and purification, or will we start it now?"

Since the furnace can be opened for purification, what are you waiting for, Tang Fei waved his hand and said: "From now on, I want to take a look at the quality of our first furnace of silicon materials." ”

With Tang Fei's decision, the workers got to work, and the arc smelting furnace began to be started to carry out the deoxidation and purification of silica in the first furnace.

It's a process that also takes some time.

After Tang Fei looked at it, he didn't wait there all the time, just have technicians and technical experts waiting for guidance.

"Let's take a look at the other production equipment for wafers. ”

Accompanied by Yang Chenglin and Wang Xingkui, Tang Fei looked at the wafer production equipment. As a technical expert, Wang Xingkui is very scientific and reasonable in the layout of production equipment.

All the production equipment has been debugged and reached the production state, and next to some production equipment, you can see the technicians and the production workers.

The next day.

Tang Fei went to the production site again, and started the deoxidation and purification of silica yesterday afternoon, and the first batch of metallurgical-grade silicon should have been produced.

That's right, metallurgical-grade silicon.

The first step in wafer manufacturing is silicon purification. The silica raw material is put into an arc furnace with a temperature of about 2000 °C and a carbon source, and at high temperatures, the carbon and the silica in the sand and gravel undergo a chemical reaction (carbon and oxygen are combined, leaving silicon) to obtain pure silicon with a purity of about 98%, also known as metallurgical grade silicon.

This is not pure enough for microelectronic devices, as the electrical properties of semiconductor materials are very sensitive to the concentration of impurities, so metallurgical grade silicon is further purified.

Generally speaking, the purity of metallurgical grade silicon is about 98%, and manufacturers with good quality can generally control the purity at more than 98%.

When Tang Fei walked into the production plant, he had already seen Wang Xingkui and others, and also saw the workers preparing for the second step of the process, preparing to further purify the metallurgical-grade silicon to reach the grade of electronic-grade silicon.

"Boss, the first batch of metallurgical-grade silicon has been produced, take a look, this is the inspection report!"

Tang Fei took the inspection report and said happily at a glance: "Good guy, the purity of the metallurgical silicon we produced has reached more than 99%, which is amazing." ”

Wang Xingkui said modestly: "The main reason is that our production equipment is good, and the production process is not bad. ”

Tang Fei knew that in addition to these reasons, there was another important factor, that is, his UBFF with a quality of +2 was quietly playing a role.

The quality of metallurgical-grade silicon is so good, so what kind of quality can the final product, that is, the wafer, be produced?

It's well worth the wait!

Metallurgical grade silicon is perfectly manufactured, and the next step is to produce electronic grade silicon.

The crushed metallurgical grade silicon is chlorinated with gaseous hydrogen chloride to produce liquid silane, and then through distillation and chemical reduction processes, high-purity polysilicon, that is, electronic grade silicon, is obtained.

Under the guidance of technicians, workers are already starting to produce electronic-grade silicon.

The first batch of electronic-grade silicon was also successfully manufactured, with a purity of 99.9999999999%. This is followed by a series of subsequent processes until the wafer is manufactured.

These days, Tang Fei has basically stayed in Jiuzhou Electronics, and even Wanheng Real Estate Group has no time to go.

The production process of the wafer is relatively smooth, deoxidation and purification to produce metallurgical-grade silicon, and then electronic-grade silicon, and the follow-up processes are being carried out. The fabrication of silicon wafers can be summarized into three basic steps: silicon refining and purification, monocrystalline silicon growth, and wafer shaping.

Tang Fei almost never left Jiuzhou Electronics until the first batch of wafers were manufactured.

The finished wafer is in the form of a thin wafer with a diameter of eight inches, which is an eight-inch wafer. They look very beautiful and have a smooth surface like a mirror.

Yang Chenglin said happily: "Boss, the first batch of wafers has been manufactured!"

Wang Xingkui next to him also said excitedly: "This is the basic raw material of chips and integrated circuits - silicon wafers, this is 'wafers'." ”

The first wafers were successfully manufactured.

Tang Fei was very happy and said loudly: "This should be the first batch of eight-inch wafers manufactured in China, which is a breakthrough of zero." ”

This is definitely a breakthrough of zero, filling the domestic gap!

Just don't know how the quality is?

Wafers are manufactured, followed by strict testing processes, only when the inspection is qualified, and the number of bad points is within the qualified range, they are truly qualified products.

Tang Fei knew this well, and waved his hand: "Arrange testing to see how the quality of our first batch of wafers is." ”

Everyone is looking forward to the quality of this batch of wafers, Yang Chenglin, Wang Xingkui, and the technicians and production workers who participated in the trial production of this wafer.

Jiuzhou Electronics has a complete set of advanced testing equipment and advanced testing methods, and immediately conducts quality inspection on this batch of wafers to see if it can meet the quality requirements.

Several technicians and some quality personnel are busy inspecting the quality of this batch of wafers that have just been manufactured.

Even Dong Bo, Ma Weijun and Hao Hongxia, three technical experts, participated in it and strictly inspected these wafers.

Wafer testing, the most typical is the wafer probing process, Jiuzhou Industry adopts such a testing process, and there are also related probing equipment.

It mainly detects defects on wafers, such as dead pixels, breakage, cracks, porosity, etc.

Wafer test is to probe each die on the wafer, the detection head is equipped with a probe made of gold wire as thin as a hair, contact with the contact on the die, test its electrical characteristics, unqualified die will be marked.

Several needle testing personnel, meticulously, strictly follow the testing process to test the wafer, and the time passes minute by minute.

One of the inspectors sweated on his forehead, and quickly wiped it gently, looked at the needle testing equipment, and then looked at the wafer being tested, and his expression was a little abnormal.

Dong Bo is an expert, he found out that this inspector was abnormal, and hurriedly asked with concern: "Xiao Zhang, what's wrong?"

Xiao Zhang said slowly: "Expert Dong, there seems to be something wrong, is there a fault in our testing equipment, you can come and take a look." ”

What the!

Dong Bo was slightly shocked in his heart, this is a brand-new, advanced testing equipment, and it is still a product of the system, how can there be any failure, could it be that Xiao Zhang made a mistake.

Dong Bo personally operated and began the inspection of the wafer, and several technicians and several quality personnel next to him gathered around to watch the personal inspection of the wafer by Dong experts.

"Huh!"

Dong Bo let out a soft "huh", looking very surprised.

It was this surprise that made the hearts of many people next to him beat faster and invisibly nervous. Some people are so nervous that their hearts seem to jump out of their throats.

Someone even blurted out, "Expert Dong, what's wrong, what's the problem!"

………

Today, we will continue to see three more, and the second one will be sent!