"No, it's not like moving the entire chip factory right away."

Pan Yongnan immediately realized that Lin Ju had a misunderstanding, and hurriedly explained:

"The process from wafer to finished chip is extremely complex, and it is not easy to concentrate in one factory, and it is neither realistic nor mature to carry them into space.

However, in general, the more important parts of chip manufacturing can be regarded as wafers, lithography, etching, and packaging; My main direction is focused on etching. ”

Lin Ju suddenly understood, he was no stranger to these processes, and what Pan Yongnan said was not complicated:

First of all, the basic semiconductor of the chip, purify it into a cylinder, after grinding, polishing, and slicing, it is a wafer, and then on the basis of it, the required circuit pattern is drawn with a lithography machine, etching after some processes, and then cut and packaged into a chip.

In lithography, there is a thin film on the surface of the wafer, and etching is the process of corroding the thin film other than the pattern drawn by the lithography machine to form a circuit, which is an important technology second only to lithography.

In terms of etching, China has developed quite well, and it can basically cope with the world's most advanced process.

Seeing that Lin Ju could understand, Pan Yongnan breathed a sigh of relief, at least he was not a complete layman.

"What I want to improve is the etching process, because of gravity on Earth, we need to etch before we can plate the metal, but if it's in space, we can use a thinner super film, and we can create enough deep grooves with photolithography alone to skip the etching process.

In fact, the Academy of Sciences has been discussing how to use microgravity in chip manufacturing since last year, but we have made the fastest progress, for example:

At the beginning, the chip was two-dimensional with only one layer, and later developed a three-dimensional structure three-dimensional manufacturing and three-dimensional packaging, but this has a limit on the earth, and in space, we can theoretically even stack it infinitely, and arbitrarily depict the real meaning of the three-dimensional circuit;

The ultimate goal of the Academy of Sciences is to increase the cost performance of space chip manufacturing by more than 100%, and then consider the construction of a space chip factory in the essence of the word. ”

The technical advantages that Pan Yongnan said earlier were okay, and when he heard that he had improved by more than 100%, Lin Ju was immediately moved.

Such a big breakthrough at a time when silicon-based semiconductor technology is developing to its limit, which can only be described as astonishing, and there is definitely potential for investment.

However, he immediately thought of a question: it stands to reason that a project with such a good prospect will go through the normal channel and the space bureau will be approved, so why bother to build the line of United Mining?

At this time, a little embarrassment finally appeared on Pan Yongnan's originally confident face, and he began to explain the process of manufacturing chips in space.

Originally, although the equipment required for the first few tests was not large, when it came time to really determine production, it was necessary to move the entire semiconductor factory to space, even if a large number of processes were simplified, it was not a small project.

There is also the problem of raw materials, chip manufacturing needs a lot of chemical raw materials and waste, not that the chip is small, but the consumption is small, but extremely large.

A chip production line capable of producing 1 million 12-inch wafers per year will consume no less amount of raw materials and water than a steel plant with an output of 1 million tons.

At present, the most basic chemical raw materials are produced on the moon to complete the preliminary preparation of wafers, and then they are sent to space for circuit mapping and packaging.

The cut chips are much easier to transport, in fact, the chips at this time are more suitable to be called wafers, and they also need to be brazed to the PCB board or secondary packaging before they can be used, and this process can be completely returned to the earth to do.

Even if a chip weighs 1 gram, 5 million chips weigh only 5 tons, and the transportation cost is very low.

According to the calculation of the number of shipments per week a year, it is also 260 million chips, which is enough to cope with the high-end production capacity.

Therefore, the most important part of the whole process is the pre-construction link, which requires a huge investment in the moon to build a complete set of facilities from the extraction of raw materials to the manufacture of high-purity silicon rods, as well as an equally large-scale supporting chemical raw material factory.

Whether or not to do this for the chip alone is debatable.

But the current situation is that United Mining intends to build infrastructure on the moon to engage in ore smelting, even if it also simplifies many procedures, but it still needs considerable supporting factories and infrastructure, and it is far from exaggerating to "incidentally" carry out the construction of chip factories on these basis.

The compatibility of chemical plants is extremely high, basically able to produce raw materials needed by all walks of life, smelters can also provide steel, three acids and two alkalis, steel, electricity is the foundation of industry, with this foundation is not to start from scratch.

However, this still requires a huge scale of investment, and it is also necessary for the steel production base of United Mining to consider providing support for chip production in the early stage, which is not easy to do without particularly strong confidence in building a space chip factory.

No matter how promising the prospect is, it is impossible for the Aviation Development Commission to make so many preparations for mass production from the beginning.

Okay......

Lin Ju praised in his heart that Pan Yongnan really found the right person, and it may be a risky and huge investment for others, but he doesn't think so.

A steel-rare metal smelting base and a possible high-tech chip factory are extremely in line with Xinyuan's strategy of striving to go out into space.

After Pan Yongnan said this, he was very nervous and waited for a reply, in fact, he was just holding the attitude of trying it out, and it was not unusual for him to be rejected.

"Yes."

Lin Ju's crisp and neat answer made him almost think that he had heard it wrong, and then he saw the former continue:

"Xinyuan can invest in this plan to accelerate the chip project, but I also have a small request."

He turned his gaze to Wang Minjiang, who was listening, and blinked, who quickly understood the meaning.

Wang Minjiang: "Professor Pan, your current research is still on silicon-based chips, right?" We are developing silicon carbide chips that natively support ternary, please also add this direction to your research, and Huanghe Semiconductor will do its best to cooperate. ”

Pan Yongnan looked at the default Lin Ju and agreed without hesitation.

"Of course, this is possible, but I am afraid that it will involve some of your company's technical secrets, and the application time of silicon carbide semiconductors is not short, but the advanced process has only just begun, and the progress may not be so fast."

"It doesn't matter, we can afford to wait, and we are willing to pay."

Lin Ju resolutely pointed at Wang Minjiang:

"Yellow River Semiconductor invests with us, at least 100 billion."

(End of chapter)