Côte d'Azur Laboratory, Purple Star Lithography Machine Dust-free Studio.

Early this morning, Luo Sheng received the news and came here, at this time in this clean room of more than 20,000 square meters, dozens of engineers and Luo Sheng are wearing work dust-free clothes inside, he is holding a wafer tape-out in his hand to observe and appreciate repeatedly, the art between this size is the masterpiece of the purple star lithography machine.

An engineer standing next to him said excitedly: "The conversion efficiency of the light source has reached the same level, and the correct control has been achieved, the team has overcome the 250 watt light source, and the customer can achieve 155 wafer throughput per hour, while in the laboratory, it can achieve more than 300 watts of light source power, and the final test of the purple star equipment can be officially shipped." ”

Several of the world's top chipmakers have long insisted that 250 watts of light source power is necessary to achieve 155 wafers per hour throughput, and ASML and light source technology supplier Cymer have not been able to achieve this light source power target so far, the company was acquired by ASML two years ago, but the progress is limited, which is why ASML has not been developing smoothly in the future, although they have already developed an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine one step ahead.

Luo Sheng handed the tape-out in his hand to the engineer next to him, and said with a smile: "Good job, we can now have the confidence to say the most important lithography machine for semiconductor manufacturing equipment, we are leading the world, and domestic semiconductor manufacturers are begging ASML to buy with a lot of banknotes, and it depends on the mood of the other party, this situation should be over." ”

The people present were also very excited when they heard this, and just after Luo Sheng's words, they couldn't stop their excitement and applauded, applauding for the milestone breakthrough in the domestic semiconductor industry, and applauding for their own careers.

More than 2,000 days and nights of fighting, if not for anything else, just to fight for a breath.

Tens of thousands of engineers, researchers, and hundreds of manufacturers cooperated, concentrating firepower to launch a continuous firepower impact towards a point, and Luo Sheng invested more than 100 billion US dollars in the research and development of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment in more than 2,000 earth sunshine cycles, which is five times the investment of ASML in extreme ultraviolet lithography machine research and development.

But there is no doubt that it is all worth it.

Li Chunsheng, the director who was transferred to the Purple Star lithography project, said: "Compared to the 25 watts in 2012, the 250 watt light source represents a tenfold improvement. And ASML engineers reluctantly said when they briefed on the economics of EUV production: 250 watts of light source power will always be the goal for next year, haha. ”

Domestic semiconductors have been inferior to foreigners, and the confidence of domestic practitioners has been hit for a long time, and this breakthrough is not only a tangible breakthrough, but also gives great confidence to people with lofty ideals in the domestic semiconductor industry.

Belief may sound a bit mysterious, especially when you work in technology, but sometimes it's really important, and it's a morale issue.

The Purple Star lithography machine was successfully completed before ASML's NXE, and although the other party will solve this problem sooner or later, and it will not be too long, this is definitely a milestone event in the field of semiconductor equipment.

Because this will break the pattern of the global semiconductor industry chain, and will also promote the entire industry into a new era.

Luo Sheng looked at the technicians present, he could see that it was difficult for everyone to calm down at the moment, and said: "There are always people outside who keep saying that our technology development cannot be successful, and our talents are not as good as foreigners." It did take a long time, a lot of human, material and financial resources, but we finally reached the end and went to a place that everyone outside thought was impossible. ”

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the milestone of light source power, there is also a significant improvement in the performance of Zixing lithography machine tools, as well as the progress of the industry in the deployment of Zixing lithography machine infrastructure, including photomasks, mask films and photoresists.

There are a few pig teammates in the team, but most of them are reliable.

The breakthrough of extreme ultraviolet lithography technology means that the life of Moore's law has been extended again, but this is not something that can be completed by one or two manufacturers.

Therefore, the domestic semiconductor industry chain built by Luo Sheng can only be carried out little by little, and the funds alone have paid as much as five times that of foreign competitors, and it also requires the concerted efforts of the entire semiconductor industry chain in the materials, equipment, knowledge and other major subdivisions, just like a team game to solve technical problems one after another, in order to move smoothly towards the destination.

The difficulties in this can not be summed up in a few words, during which the team's running-in, interest disputes with upstream and downstream manufacturers, technical differences, etc. are all problems and must be solved.

There are also pig teammates like Pengxing Precision who cheat money in this process, this is what Luo Sheng is most angry about, it doesn't matter if he cheats his money, he has money, but it is the most helpless to delay the development progress because of this matter.

The biggest difference between the semiconductor industry and other industries is that it needs to be rushed together by major subdivisions, you drop a chain here, and other links are fine, but in order to wait for you to put down your footing, you can only stare dryly during this period, and the barrel effect is amplified in this field.

Obviously, this is of course an angry scolding for other link manufacturers.

"Chunsheng, you notify the heads of the technical departments to have a small meeting in ten minutes." Luo Sheng explained and left the clean room of the purple star lithography machine.

"Okay." Lee Chun-sheng.

……

Less than ten minutes later, in a break room inside the Côte d'Azur laboratory, Li Chunsheng informed the heads of the major technical departments that they had all put down their work and came here.

At this moment, more than 20 people are sitting in the lounge, standing, leaning against the wall, and so on.

Luo Sheng looked at everyone at the moment is radiant and happy, after all, today is indeed a moment worth celebrating, the outside world does not know that the domestic integrated circuit industry has made a milestone breakthrough, but they are in the front line of scientific research personnel already know.

Everyone can't wait to report this exciting news to the nation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in the past six years, my financial investment in the domestic semiconductor industry alone has exceeded 3 trillion yuan, of which the R&D investment in lithography equipment alone has exceeded more than 660 billion.

Luo Sheng's words caused everyone to laugh again and again, the domestic integrated circuit business has been silently dormant and forging ahead in the past six years, which is naturally the credit of the whole team, but everyone also knows that Luo Sheng is inseparable from Luo Sheng to achieve such a milestone breakthrough.

Without his courage, without his financial support and key technology support, as well as his strong cohesion to bring together the top talents of the entire industry, it would be absolutely impossible for the domestic integrated circuit industry to achieve today's results.

Who is the biggest contributor to the round, it must be Luo Sheng, and no one is dissatisfied with this.

Luo Sheng continued: "Therefore, through the purple star lithography machine officially into the commercialization is to be put on the agenda, but the people present are engaged in technology, commercialization has other teams will come to engage in it, we still have to talk about technical issues today, the breakthrough of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machine does not mean that the high-end manufacturing of the domestic integrated circuit industry has been completely autonomous, I am not afraid to tell you, we have only achieved the goal of 40% so far, and there are still 60% of the goal to be overcome." ”

As soon as these words came out, they poured cold water on everyone from the joyful atmosphere and calmed down.

Yes, the reason why the semiconductor business is difficult is that it is difficult here, there seems to be a never-ending hurdle ahead, and the core link has still not achieved full domestic independence.

For example, the wafer purification technology of chips, at present, domestic related manufacturers have not reached the point of high-precision, this link is monopolized by Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical, and the world's high-end chip wafers are used by Shin-Etsu Chemical, if he does not give you high-purity wafers, the whole industry is still in a state of lying down.

In other words, Luo Sheng's investment of 3 trillion yuan still cannot realize the autonomy of the entire domestic high-end chip industry, and as long as the other party gets stuck with you for a year and a half, the money may be wasted.

There are other key links as well.

There is a long way to go to make the whole industrial chain of domestic semiconductors independent.

Luo Sheng said in a deep voice: "The current news in the industry is that next year Lift Semiconductor and Samsung have successfully introduced EUV technology into 10 nanometers and started mass production, in the field of high-end chip manufacturing, we are now in the top echelon, the light source is done, but some technologies and materials are still a huge challenge, that is, after entering a new chapter of Moore's Law, the process below 9 nanometers needs to reduce costs and have higher resolution extreme ultraviolet photoresist technology." ”

Photoresist, this is the next technical pain point.

Everyone has guessed what Luo Sheng is going to talk about, and now the semiconductor process is being pushed to the 10nm process, but it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve specific patterns, and multiple exposures have also brought up production costs.

Luo continued: "With the introduction of extreme ultraviolet lithography, it plays a key lithography layer for the latest logic processes, and before chip manufacturers were introduced, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) was composed of a lithography machine, a light source, a photoresist and a photomask. ”

Everyone nodded silently, the criticality of the previous extreme ultraviolet lithography technology was mostly in the light source, because the insufficient power of the light source would affect the production efficiency of the chip.

After the light source problem is solved, the new challenge is the limitation of photoresist technology.

……

Chinese Net