The carbon-based chip is done!

This is probably the best news Lu Zhou has heard in the past few days.

After being surprised for a while, he didn't hesitate, and immediately asked Yang Xu to take him to the Institute of Computational Materials and found the laboratory where the carbon-based chip project team was located.

When the two arrived at the lab, it was quite quiet.

A group of researchers with a dangerous hairline are gathered around an experimental device about two people tall, and one of the researchers is carefully adjusting something.

didn't go up to disturb them, Lu Zhou pulled Yang Xu and waited at the door for a while.

Soon, the sound of exclamation gradually spread from the crowd.

Looking at the excited expressions on the faces of those researchers, Lu Zhou could guess without asking that they should have found something amazing.

Waiting a little anxiously, Yang Xu looked at Lu Zhoudao.

"Let's go over."

Lu Zhou nodded.

"Hmm."

Bypassing a large pile of experimental equipment and walking into the laboratory, when the two were about to approach the experimental equipment, the group of researchers finally found Lu Zhou and Yang Xu.

Standing in the crowd, a middle-aged man who looked very academic, with a surprised expression on his face, hurriedly stepped forward and said.

"Director Yang? Dean Lu? ”

"This is the person in charge of the project," knowing that Lu Zhou was meeting this for the first time, Yang Xu skillfully introduced to him, "Professor Wu Tianqun." ”

"Hello Professor Wu."

"Hello, hello," flattered to hold Lu Zhou's right hand, Professor Wu shook it enthusiastically, "Academician Lu, why are you here in person?" ”

"I heard that the experiment has results, so Yang Xu pulled me over," let go of his hand, looking at the equipment in the crowd, Lu Zhou smiled and asked, "It's already done?" ”

The waist was straight, and Professor Wu said with a red face.

"This is a repeat experiment, and the first experiment was successful yesterday!"

Lu Zhou immediately said, "Do you want to show me?" ”

Professor Wu immediately made a gesture of please.

"Please come with me!"

Producing a chip is quite a complicated thing, using silicon wafers as a substrate, layering layers of light masks on top of each other, stacking them like stacks of Lego toys, and finally getting a complete chip.

This sounds easy, but considering that these "toys" are nm-scale, and they also include complex IC design and lithography processes, etc., it is confusing to say that it can produce a chip that meets market expectations, and has almost become an important indicator to measure the foundation of a country's electronics industry.

Leaving aside what this means for a country or a company, let's talk about it from a technical point of view.

In the CMOS process, the feature size is typically represented as the width of the "gate", i.e., the channel length of the MOS device. In general, the smaller the feature size, the higher the integration of the chip, the better the performance, and the lower the power consumption.

However, this size cannot be cut indefinitely.

First of all, silicon atoms have their own width, and then the tunneling effect in quantum mechanics will become more and more impossible to ignore with the continuous shrinking of line width, and the combination of various factors seriously limits the future of silicon-based chips.

However, humanity's quest for new technologies is eternal.

Since silicon-based chips can't work, then open up new battlefields on other materials that may work.

According to the latest research, the use of carbon nanotubes and molybdenum disulfide has opened up a new way for the chip manufacturing process to continue to improve, and people have seen the dawn of continuing Moore's Law.

However, the situation is not always so rosy.

Although these two materials have the potential to replace silicon-based chips, because of their respective defects, research institutions around the world that research silicon-based chips instead of materials have been unable to break through the most critical bottleneck.

In other words, these two groundbreaking materials were used to successfully make the core component of the chip - the transistor!

As early as when studying graphene superconducting materials, Lu Zhou discovered two single-layer graphene overlapping at special angles, which will exhibit the characteristics of Mott insulators under special circumstances.

This major discovery not only directly led to the explosive breakthrough of carbon-based superconducting materials, but also laid the foundation for the success of the Pangu controlled fusion reactor.

Not only that, but Lu Zhou was keenly aware that this characteristic could not only be applied in the field of superconductivity, but also in the field of semiconductors.

Of course, he didn't know much about the semiconductor industry, and he just made such a judgment out of academic intuition.

At that time, he originally planned to invest in this project with his partner Manager Sun of Baosheng Group, but unfortunately Manager Sun felt that this project was not very reliable at that time, and as the manager of a subsidiary of China Airlines Group, he did not have so much decision-making power, so he played Tai Chi and pushed it away.

However, Lu Zhou didn't care, one was not short of money, two was not short of people, and three was not concerned about losses, after returning to China, he pulled a research and development team out by himself, hung under the banner of the Institute of Computational Materials, and started the project himself.

It has been two or three years since the project was established, and I finally saw the dawn.

Standing next to the experimental equipment, looking at the transistor completed by the carbon-based chip project team through the microscope, Lu Zhou couldn't help but let out a sigh of emotion after a long time.

"Pretty ......"

Although it is made of pitch-black graphite, it is stripped of graphene fragments and stacked into transistors, like a diamond with delicate workmanship, which shines brightly in the images presented by the microscope.

Yang Xu, who was standing next to him, couldn't help it for a long time, and when he saw Lu Zhou remove his eyes from the eyepiece, he hurriedly stepped forward.

"Let me take a look."

Lu Zhou smiled and took a step to the side, giving up the eyepiece to Yang Xu.

He looked at the eyepiece for a while, and it was about two minutes before he let out an exclamation.

"It's a bargain to describe it as a diamond...... I dare say that all the diamonds in the world combined, they are not as valuable as this thing. ”

Lu Zhou smiled.

"That's an exaggeration...... But I agree with you that the price of a diamond is a bit cheaper. ”

If it puts this thing up for auction, I'm afraid that even if it shouts a sky-high price enough to buy a truckload of diamonds, a large group of people will be willing to pay for it.

After all......

In this small carbon-based transistor, a future full of endless reverie is brewing......

Looking back at the researchers standing behind him, Lu Zhou cleared his throat and spoke.

"As long as carbon-based transistors can be manufactured, it is equivalent to breaking through the most critical bottleneck of carbon-based chip technology! Although the size of our carbon-based transistor is still an order of magnitude behind the size of common silicon-based transistors on the market, the chip made of carbon-based transistor is unimaginable in terms of the theoretical minimum process! ”

How unimaginable it is, Lu Zhou is difficult to describe in words.

The only thing that is certain is that this great research result has broadened the lower limit of the chip process by an order of magnitude!

It is no exaggeration to say that if Professor Wu plans to evaluate academicians, with this achievement, Lu Zhou will be able to find a way to push him up as soon as the next academician co-election year arrives.

Even if it doesn't work, it will definitely work out if you wait for another term!

"You guys are doing a great job!"

Looking at the group of researchers with excited expressions, and at Professor Wu Tianqun, whose face was red because of excitement and pride, Lu Zhou paused for a moment and continued in a solemn tone.

"Today, right now, we have made history and redefined the future!"