The ups and downs of life in the Siheyuan

When the vacuum furnace could work normally, Li Yuan made a gesture behind him.

People who had been anxiously waiting for the results suddenly cheered.

Li Yuan turned around with a smile and turned on the crucible heating device.

Through the observation window, you can see that the copper tube coil around the crucible begins to turn red.

He controlled the vacuum from time to time.

After a while, Master Xiao, neatly dressed, walked in and began to take over the vacuum control work.

Li Yuan concentrated on observing the changes in the crucible.

Soon, the silica powder began to melt.

Until it all melted into a red liquid, he controlled the lifting handle to fall.

When the seed crystal under the gripper falls into the liquid surface, a layer of liquid immediately surrounds the seed crystal.

He controlled the motor, and the seed crystal rotated and pulled upward.

A crystal column with a diameter of no less than 3 inches was slowly pulled up.

When the single crystal pillar grows to about 5mm, the crystal pillar slowly becomes thinner until it breaks.

Li Yuan knew that there was a problem with the coordination of rotation and lifting speed.

Because this coordination problem was taken into consideration at the beginning of the design, one of the transmission gears was designed as a cone.

Only by adjusting the cutting depth of this cone can the rotation and pulling speed be adjusted.

Based on experience, Li Yuan slowed down a bit.

The experiment continues.

Adjust, fail, adjust again, fail again. . .

Although we got several single crystal pillars over 1 foot long in the process, this was not the designed capacity of the vacuum pulling furnace.

The experiment continues.

It was not until two days later that Li Yuan finally prepared a 4-inch, 1.5-meter-high single crystal column.

When Li Yuan opened the vacuum furnace and took out the single crystal column from inside, everyone in the other laboratories ran out and lay on the glass to watch the excitement.

Huang Yan happily patted Li Yuan on the back. She also participated in the debugging of the vacuum furnace yesterday.

"Success?"

"Successful!" Li Yuan's voice was trembling.

Huang Yan turned to the hall, looked at the senior brothers, junior brothers, and junior sisters who were already immersed in the sea of ​​joy, and laughed.

Senior Brother Gong sat motionless, tears slowly falling on his face.

At first he was very high-spirited and focused on the semiconductor laboratory, and achieved impressive results in just a few years.

Just when he was about to flex his muscles, his work was stopped.

The laboratory was shut down.

Then there’s the leadership conversation.

He was confused at the time, and there was always a fire in his heart.

After arriving in this underground laboratory, he became unknown and had to obey the orders of his junior brother.

He was confused and in pain.

With the teacher's persuasion, I finally convinced myself to cooperate with my younger brother Li Yuan from now on.

Until the vacuum lifting furnace was installed, he had been looking forward to the day of success.

I succeeded today, and the depression in my heart has been relieved.

Looking at Huang Yan, who was bouncing around heartlessly, he laughed and cried.

In the dust-free laboratory, Huang Yan slowly calmed down.

She began to concentrate on cleaning the crucible and adding new silicon powder.

Under Li Yuan's guidance, the vacuum furnace was turned off and vacuuming started.

After one and a half hours, except for the manual control of the vacuum degree, the preparation of the single crystal rod was completely automated.

The results were very gratifying. Huang Yan used a vacuum furnace to obtain a single crystal column of the same size.

Huang Yan excitedly high-fived Li Yuan.

Senior Brother Gong, sitting in the hall, looked at them happily.

The two walked out of the dust-free workshop.

"I got off work early today, and each person received a pound of meat coupons and a pound of peanut oil."

The laboratory suddenly turned into a sea of ​​joy.

Li Yuan has already prepared these for this day.

After everyone left, the three of them sat in the hall.

"What's the next step?" Huang Yan asked.

“It’s cut into wafers, then ground and polished.

Then proceed to test the oxidation furnace."

"I'm responsible for the oxidation work, right?" Senior Brother Gong said.

"No, leave the oxidation work to Teacher Ai. Senior brother, your future work will mainly be to design transistors and special-purpose chips.

First, design a special chip for automatically controlling the vacuum furnace, and hand it over to Mr. Bi for packaging and testing. ".

"how about you?"

According to everyone's discussion, someone is responsible for all process nodes, except Li Yuan himself.

"I want to design a semiconductor memory. The current magnetic core memory is too unreliable and too large."

"If the design is successful, it will indeed be good news for computers," Senior Brother Gong acknowledged.

"Next, should we continue to produce single crystal rods of this specification, or explore increasing the diameter?" Huang Yan asked.

"Let's continue production first and satisfy the needs of those research institutes first.

At the same time, you lead people to solidify the operating procedures and organize the drawings and documents of the vacuum lifting furnace to facilitate subsequent delivery."

"There is no problem in leaving this job to me, but it requires your and Master Xiao's participation."

"no problem".

After everyone left, Li Yuan called his superiors.

At 9 p.m., a truck wearing a cloak drove into the substation.

The two single crystal rods were carefully wrapped and sent away with great care.

That night, in a laboratory of a certain research institute, two single crystal rods were placed on the experimental table.

"How is this possible! You can actually buy single crystal rods of this size. It's incredible!" a man with glasses said in surprise.

"Yes, foreign technology is developing too fast now. 3-inch wafers have just been released, and now 4-inch wafers have been produced.

At this pace, 5-inch and 6-inch wafers will be launched one after another," said researcher A.

"Hey, this is the gap!" Researcher B said.

"When can we use our own wafers?" Researcher C sighed.

"I heard from my classmates that Huaqing University has already developed a 3-inch wafer," researcher D said.

"In the end, it's not a refutation of the rumor. It was a small section prepared by accident in the laboratory, and it has never been reproduced again," said researcher A.

"What a pity, why can't the curing process be cured? I hope they can reproduce it as soon as possible," said researcher D.

“I have a classmate in the Semiconductor Laboratory of Huaqing University. They have now given up on continuing to study wafers and have begun to study the design and implementation of transistors.

They have launched in-depth cooperation with Xiangjiang University and are said to be able to obtain 3-inch wafers," said researcher C.

"Why give up? It's hard to understand!" said researcher D.

"It is said that the investment is too high, so it is better to purchase wafers directly," researcher C said.

"What belongs to others is always others', and wafers cannot become our bottleneck," said researcher D.

"The gap is getting wider and wider. We haven't figured out the 3-inch version, but the other party has already launched a 4-inch version," said researcher C.

"Okay, don't discuss this anymore, think about how to cut and the subsequent process." A leader-like person came in.

Everyone began to discuss the next work.

"By the way, these two complete single crystal rods are hard to come by. You must keep them secret."

Everyone nodded.

Time to return to the underground laboratory.

Since the development of the 4-inch single crystal rod, the focus of the underground laboratory's work has been on how to transform the technology.

Master Xiao spends most of his time responsible for the subsequent wafer cutting.

Although it was not smooth at first, Li Yuan had no intention of reaching out.

The laboratory is now in operation, and everyone needs to perform their duties.

Only through continuous practice can you adapt as soon as possible.

Half a month later, the first wafer was ground and polished, and the oxidation furnace was also debugged.