Ultra-Dimensional Technology Era

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In November, after Double Eleven on Taotao.com.

Huang Mingzhe has been working in Shanmei's research institute, and other affairs are controlled remotely through the Internet.

In the Institute of Physics, two improved sunbow lasers, which had just been transported from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Machinery, were being installed in a laboratory at this time.

The staff is slowly debugging. These two lasers are mainly used to study controllable nuclear fusion projects, that is to say, inertial binding nuclear fusion.

The Dayi Wakefield Accelerator can be used to verify the plasma turbulence model, but to conduct real experiments, special laboratories must be used.

Not only the Institute of Optics and Mechanics participated in this project, but other domestic nuclear physics institutes also paid close attention to it and sent many researchers to participate.

Among the controllable nuclear fusion, the route of inertial binding nuclear fusion is actually not favored by the physics community, mainly because inertial binding nuclear fusion is difficult to control.

Inertial binding nuclear fusion, to put it bluntly, is a miniature nuclear bomb that focuses nuclear fuel through high-energy lasers to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction.

For now, this plan has some difficult problems to solve, such as continuous operation of nuclear fusion reaction, cleaning of slag, how to generate electricity, how to solve neutron irradiation and so on.

As for why inertial binding fusion was chosen for the experiment instead of a tokamak device or stellarator.

In fact, inertial binding nuclear fusion also has advantages, such as simple equipment and the possibility of miniaturization of equipment.

At present, the Institute of Optics and Mechanics has obtained a large amount of funding, and with the money from Siwei Society, they have refreshed the energy level of the laser to about 9700J, and it is estimated that they will break through the [-] mark soon.

Inertial confinement relies most on the energy level of the laser. Huang Mingzhe's plan is to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction with a laser, and then control the plasma with a magnetic field to generate magnetic fluid power.

However, the energy level of lasers is not enough now, and the energy level of lasers can reach more than 5 J per unit. The possibility of successful practical use of inertial confinement nuclear fusion will be greater than that of tokamak devices.

Chapter 92 12nm

While installing the laser at the Institute of Physics, various ancillary facilities are also under construction, but the development of inertial binding fusion is not that simple.

Wei Feng at the Dayi scientific research base has conducted three plasma experiments, namely 1-minute plasma control, 5-minute plasma control, and 10-minute plasma control.

Judging from the reaction situation, the experiment was very successful. The plasma turbulence model built by the two of them firmly placed the plasma, a problem child with ADHD, in the reaction chamber.

However, controlling the plasma is only the first step in the long march. The following neutron irradiation, continuous operation, power generation issues, etc., need to be done by two people.

The two discussed various problems encountered in inertial restraint through online video.

at the same time.

SMIC's Jiangcheng plant.

Gao Zhiyuan personally rushed over from Shanmei just for the test run of the chip production line this time.

Due to the major domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers, the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the recent period, and they have already surpassed the world-class or even top-level level.

With the support of upstream semiconductor equipment suppliers, SMIC is like a godsend in the development of the 12nm process.

A purely localized chip production line, with the efforts of a group of engineers and technicians, can already enter the trial operation stage.

"Mr. Gao, let's start." Zhao Jun turned his head and asked.

Gao Zhiyuan nodded.

"Weiguang, let's start a trial run."

"it is good."

Zhao Jun gave an order, and everyone took their positions.

According to the chip manufacturing process, they took out a batch of eight-inch silicon wafers from the warehouse and sent them to the production line.

The process is cleaning, drying, coating, polishing, cleaning, drying, photolithography...

There are some processes that need to be repeated, such as cleaning and drying. After each silicon wafer is polished, photolithographic, and etched, it needs to be cleaned and dried to ensure that there will be no residue on the silicon wafer.

Watching silicon wafers being repeatedly operated on the production line made everyone extremely nervous.

Looking at the hard work of more than half a year, Zhao Jun was a little restless at this moment, and subconsciously touched his pocket, ready to take out the cigarettes he carried with him, but he found nothing.

Only then did he realize that smoking is not allowed in the clean room.

And Li Weiguang, Jiang Shangzhou and others were not much better, either staring at the production line or fidgeting.

"Everyone, don't be nervous." Gao Zhiyuan comforted everyone with a big heart.

"It's okay not to be nervous!" Zhao Jun smiled wryly.

Since the lithography process is faster than ordinary lithography machines, the entire process takes about five hours.

The first piece of silicon wafer is finally freshly out of the oven, and it is densely covered with chips. Now the chip is entering the final stage, that is, segmentation.

The segmentation method adopted by SMIC is wire cutting.

Under the control of CNC machine tools, thin metal wires are accurately divided into chips.

Of course, the chip at this time is still a semi-finished product, which needs to be packaged and tested before it can be launched or delivered to merchants.

However, SMIC is in trial operation. This chip is just an ordinary 32G storage chip. Even if it is not packaged, it can still be tested. This is a small-scale self-test within the chip manufacturing company.

More than 1 32G storage chips that were quickly cut out were carefully taken to the testing room by engineers and technicians.

Zhao Jun, Gao Zhiyuan and others hurriedly followed.

The testing room was put into intensive testing and divided into ten groups to test these storage chips together.

In fact, using a 12nm process to produce 32G storage chips is an overkill, but SMIC itself has no idea, fearing that the steps will be too big, so it can only make a 32G storage chip for trial operation.

On the side of the computer, there are chips that have been tested successfully and chips that have failed.

Although SMIC has been striving for perfection, it is a pity that it is the first time to play with the 12nm process, and the chip pass rate is naturally terrible. After testing 500 chips, the current pass rate is only about 62%.

Moreover, the qualified rate does not mean that all qualified chips are the same. Among these qualified chips, there are also high-quality products, good products, and qualified products. Currently, high-quality products only account for about 43%, and the remaining 19% are qualified products, or Say defective.

"It's okay! It's okay!" Li Weiguang didn't feel frustrated when he saw this data, but he was relieved.

They experimented with chip manufacturing before, and even had a lower pass rate than this time. This is a situation that every chip manufacturing company has to face.

In the research and development of a new process, the pass rate exceeds 60% at the beginning, which is already a very good process.

Zhao Jun, Jiang Shangzhou and others also breathed a sigh of relief. They have been busy for more than half a year and spent tens of billions of funds. If the pass rate is terrible, they will probably be depressed to death.

"Mr. Zhao, when do you estimate that productivity will be formed?" Gao Zhiyuan is most concerned about this issue. After all, after the privatization of SMIC, the majority of these R&D funds are now invested by Shenguang Instruments.

"Hmm..." Zhao Jun thought for a few minutes: "We strive to complete the debugging work before the Spring Festival and increase the pass rate to over 95%."