Feldhormann, Netherlands.

ASML, one of the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers, is headquartered in this city.

As a company that provides comprehensive key lithography equipment to chip manufacturers around the world, ASML's position in the world's semiconductor industry is not an exaggeration. The world needs ASML, just as the Internet is inseparable from the world's basic computer rooms.

At this time, ASML's CEO, Lunin Chersman, was sitting in his office watching a video interview about him.

“…… Yes, it is impossible for Huaxia to build a lithography machine alone from the world, after all, this is a very systematic project. ”

Seeing this, Lu Ning was a little dissatisfied.

These damn American media, always take things out of context.

When he was interviewed, he clearly said that the lithography machine is the crystallization of the wisdom of all mankind. It is the most powerful proof of global marketization.

There is nothing wrong with this view.

For example, ASML's lithography machine, the core light source supplier is cymer from the United States, the lens is from Zeiss in Germany, the ultraviolet light box is from Hijima, and many precision components are from the local KmwEGroup......

Well, actually, that's not wrong to take that sentence.

It is indeed unlikely that Huaxia will be able to produce high-performance lithography equipment on its own.

There could not be such a powerful country on this planet.

Lunin Chelsman shook his head, and then directly moved the mouse to close the news pushed by Nbc.

If you really want to say it, purely from the perspective of doing business, no one wants to give up the huge market with great potential in Huaxia.

A quarter of the world's population is no joke.

Not to mention that Huaxia's orders once accounted for 25 percent of ASML's total annual revenue.

But what could he do?

There are some limitations that can only be said to be powerless.

"Knock Knock Knock ......"

The sound of a knock on the door at the right time made Lunin Chelsman put away the irritable emotion in his heart and said casually: "Come in." ”

The office door was pushed open, and the secretary stood in front of it: "Mr. Chelsman, Mr. Brink wants to ......." ”

"Okay, Lu Ning, I have something very important to talk to you about."

Before the secretary could finish speaking, a tall figure walked directly past the secretary and into the office.

Lu Ning raised his hand and waved, and the secretary closed the door in amusement.

There's no way to care about this man's impoliteness.

Schneider Brink, the company's president and chief technology officer, is also a member of the board of directors.

In terms of status in the company, the two are about the same.

"Coffee?" Lu Ning picked up the Americano on the table and asked.

"I don't need to, but I suggest you take a sip quickly, because you may not be in the mood to drink it when you hear about it." Schneider said with a serious expression.

"Oh?" Lu Ning put away his relaxed expression and asked in surprise, "What's the matter?" ”

Schneider took a deep breath and then said, "We suspect that Huaxia has developed a new large-scale lithography equipment, and this equipment has entered the testing stage. It's not as good as our NxE:3600d, but it's probably not that big. Of course, it may also be comparable to the NxE:3800E, and I mean the combined performance of process, energy efficiency and productivity. ”

Lu Ning tilted his head, then raised his hands, looked Schneider Brink sitting in front of him up and down with a very confused gaze, and felt that the company's chief technology officer didn't seem to be joking, before he shook his head and said seriously: "Schneider, it's August now, and there are still eight months until April Fool's Day next year." ”

"This is not an April Fool's joke." Schneider shook his head.

"But it can't be! There is no evidence that there is a technology in this world that can surpass us! Lu Ning subconsciously swallowed his saliva and emphasized.

"Of course, I didn't think any differently from you an hour ago. Okay, is the computer on? Schneider gestured to the laptop in front of Lu Ning.

Lu Ning directly raised his hand and pushed the computer over, and said, "Cast the screen." ”

Soon the large screen directly opposite Lu Ning lit up, and then soon entered an animation-like interface, with a circular track above, and a neatly distributed machine around the circular track, and a console below.

Lu Ning glanced at Schneider in surprise.

However, Schneider ignored him and just operated step by step.

Soon the picture moved, and countless particles in the circular orbit began to rotate rapidly under the guidance of the pillar of light, and then a ray of radiation directly pointed at the machine, and by adjusting the control panel, the speed of particle rotation can be controlled, and the intensity of the radiation source can be controlled at the same time.

After watching quietly for a minute, Lu Ning asked, "What do you mean?" ”

"This is a dynamic simulation created by the engineering department from a paper published in a journal six hours ago. As you can see, high-intensity light sources stabilized by radiation accelerated by particles, and then used to lithography. According to the data analysis in the paper, its maximum exposure capacity can even reach 28mJ per square centimeter, and its wafer throughput is estimated to be between 160 and 185 wafers per hour. Of course, this number is multiplied by 28. Schneider explained in a deep voice.

Lu Ning's mouth was half open, as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn't say anything.

Schneider doesn't stop talking, and continues: "Not only that, but the control system is very complete, which makes it possible to be more flexible in machining. Only need to input different programs and parameters separately to generate different light sources and use different processes to produce different chips. In other words, this huge piece of equipment is equivalent to a large lithography factory. Moreover, it is also a lithography factory that produces according to different needs. In other words, the system can then be switched between EUV and dUV. Whether it is a high-end chip or a low-end chip, it can be produced. ”

As Schneider's words fell, the office began to become quiet.

Lu Ning frowned, probably digesting the meaning of Schneider's words just now.

If all this is true, it means that if Huaxia really puts this kind of large-scale equipment into production, it will quickly replace ASML's irreplaceable position in the semiconductor industry.

In the short term, the consequence is that they will lose the Chinese market forever. Huaxia, in particular, doesn't even need their low-end lithography machines anymore.

If we take a long-term view, when Huaxia masters the ability of mass production, it seems that it is not as simple as losing the Huaxia market.

So after being silent for a long time, Lu Ning asked a very serious question: "Have you made a cost estimate?" If this judgment is true, how much will such a set of equipment cost? ”

Schneider shrugged his shoulders and said, "According to our estimates, the cost should be about thirty to thirty billion five billion dollars." But you should know that if all the components are produced in China, this price may need to be discounted by seven to eight percent. That's $2.1 to $2.8 billion. If after three to five years, Huaxia has mastered the ability to mass production......"

There are some things that don't need to be said too thoroughly.

Huaxia has mass production capacity of products, and now the international market is very good.

Not to mention that the semiconductor market has its own special features. Once Huaxia overcomes the problem of lithography machine, it will definitely be a double blow to ASML.

Let's put it this way, if Huaxia's locally produced chips can be self-sufficient, and even have the spare capacity to export to foreign countries, ASML's current big customers will all have a sharp drop in sales, turnover and profits.

The decrease in sales also means that the demand for upstream equipment is reduced, and the lithography machine will not be sold in the future, and the profit will naturally decrease accordingly.

At the same time, lithography machines are an industry that needs to continue to invest in high R&D, and reduced profits mean that there is no money for R&D investment, and the prospects are bleak.

Of course, this may not happen immediately, but both the president and the cEo have a long-term vision, and isn't this what ASML will experience in the next ten years?

Unless ASML can quickly iterate its products and develop a lithography machine that breaks through the nano limit, it will once again gain a first-mover advantage.

But again, this is clearly an almost impossible task.

I was able to break through early!

Lu Ning's brain felt chaotic for a while.

However, the next moment, Schneider spoke again: "Not only that, Huaxia also published another paper in science, which provides an idea of chip manufacturing, using two-dimensional materials combined with semi-metallic bismuth, which can achieve extremely low resistance and increase the transmission current, which is close to the quantum limit." According to the data given in the paper, this material can already control the thickness of 1 to 3 atoms. According to our calculations, this paper is also highly likely. Now the institute has begun to try to reproduce this result. But it is difficult to say whether this direction can be industrialized or not. ”

Lu Ning suddenly felt a little nervous.

Yesterday, when he was just in an interview, he said to the camera that it is impossible for Chinese people to break away from the world and build lithography machines alone.

This morning, he was still annoying about the media taking quotes out of context, and then he heard these two "good news" one after another.

What the hell is wrong with this world? Murphy's Law and Moore's Law, and you want to give him some color at the same time?

Really, it's ridiculous!

The brain's ability to think almost stopped at this moment, and after a while, Lu Ning looked at the company's chief technology officer with a strange expression and asked, "Can you be 100% sure that the Huaxia people have started these experiments?" ”

What he didn't expect was that Schneider hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and said, "No." ”

"Huh?" Lu Ning suddenly felt that the sky was bright again......

"Let's take a look at the company's internal technical discussion forum." Schneider did not force an explanation, but quickly turned off the animation just now, and entered the company's forum for engineering and technical personnel to communicate on the computer.

Sure enough, it was full of posts discussing the topic.

In particular, a comprehensive post called Huaxia New Lithography Technology Discussion has more than 3,000 related discussions.

One point is the latest statement.

"I just re-modified the parameters, but unfortunately the paper does not describe the component library in detail, but the results given by the computer are not much different from the paper data, about 20%. More detailed parameters are required to decide. ”

"Don't think about it, if this is true, it is impossible for the Huaxia people to give more detailed data."

"Is it possible that this is really a theoretical derivation? After all, I've never heard about it before. You have to know such a huge design and engineering, but there are so many engineering problems that need to be solved, and every solution can be written as a patent, but I just searched the patent library and did not find any relevant technical information. ”

"I hope it's just a theory, but how do you explain the data and the control system that are almost impossible to fake?"

"Yes, we've verified all the data many times, and I'm sure someone has done it before us. If it is an absurd result, it is simply impossible to publish. ”

"There is a possibility that the news has been blocked. Huaxia did not intend to protect it through patents at all, and it was not until now that the laboratory was about to successfully verify that the paper was issued. ”

"As a reminder, the author of this paper is a mathematician, the same mathematician who proposed a coupled causal framework for group theory. Moreover, the name of the paper is one and his, and I am not surprised that the list of authors of such papers is generally longer than the abstract. ”

"Putting aside the technical aspects, this is definitely the most outrageous thing I've ever seen in my life, and there is no one."

……

After showing part of the discussion, Schneider said in a muffled voice: "Got it?" Now we are not sure of anything, because all we have evidence is only two papers. We need more evidence or intelligence to make more accurate judgments. ”

Lu Ning was silent for a long time and said, "It seems that I need to call the Americans first." ”

Schneider nodded.

……

In fact, it is not only the bigwigs of the semiconductor industry in the West who have been tossed by Qiao Ze's two papers.

When the news came back to Huaxia at the speed of light, many people in Huaxia were also full of question marks at this time.

A successful joke generally can't really let go of one's own people.

It's not that the scientific research bigwigs are all night owls, the main reason is that many foreign counterparts don't talk about martial arts, encounter problems that can't be figured out, and regardless of the time difference, an international long-distance call to China disturbs many people's dreams.

For example, Academician Zhong Chengming, who has been leading the team to study the light source of the lithography machine, was woken up by the ringing of the phone at about six o'clock in the morning.

"Academician Zhong, I'm sorry, the main reason is that the incident happened too suddenly...... We noticed that there are two papers published in science, one of which is very strange, just now Mr. Chen said that I hope you can come to the institute to do a verification? ”

"What paper?"

"Well, the idea of a new complete lithography facility."

"Huh? Just a paper needs to be in such a hurry? ”

"This ...... I can't explain...... Or might as well come and see for yourself. ”

"Can't explain? How can a paper not be explained? Never mind...... I will get up with Mr. Chen and go to the office in half an hour. ”

……

There is much more than one such call.

But the most innocent of them probably belong to the leaders of Xilin University of Technology.