Chapter 211 The Secret Lithography Department

Tianyu Xinghai, Ma Tian's office.

Ma Tian was sitting in his seat, waiting for Xia Wei and others to arrive. Nie Zhenyuan had an appointment with him today.

However, Ma Tian's thoughts were constantly recalling what happened last night.

Last night, when he wanted to follow the man's instinct to take the next step, he was rejected by the shy Li Runqi, who said that she didn't want Ma Tian to see her ugly appearance now, and directly drove Ma Tian out of the room.

Then, Li Runqi, who closed the door, lay on the bed again, covering her face and laughing, her face flushed.

Mr. Lao She said that a girl's blushing face is better than a long confession. That touch of highland red is the most memorable look of a girl in a man's heart, but unfortunately, Ma Tian didn't see it.

He confirmed the relationship in a daze, and became shy after confirming the relationship. Ma Tian also felt strange.

"Mr. Ma, Mr. Nie is already waiting in the hall." The secretary's voice came, interrupting Ma Tian's thinking.

"Please let him in!"

After a moment, Ma Tian saw Nie Zhenyuan, whose eyes were red and swollen but he was forcing himself to be energetic.

Last night, Ma Tian had a pleasant barbecue party, but Nie Zhenyuan, who rushed to Xiang City by plane, was suffering every second, wishing to see Ma Tian as soon as the sun rose.

For Xia Wei, the chip issue was like a thorn in their throat, making them unable to eat or sleep well.

"Mr. Ma, it's an honor and pleasure to see you again!" Nie Zhenyuan came in and greeted him warmly, as if he was seeing a savior.

"Sit down, Mr. Nie!" Ma Tian looked at Nie Zhenyuan and smiled. He saw that Nie Zhenyuan was not in a good state. It seemed that Xia Wei was really suffering during this period.

"Tell me about your Xia Wei's affairs. You don't have to keep it secret in front of me." Ma Tian said seriously.

Tianyu Xinghai has long been a famous domestic brand, and it's just short of being named "Zhong". There is no need for Xia Wei to hide it from him.

Nie Zhenyuan naturally knew this, and he told Xia Wei that the contract for purchasing chips was breached, and most of the high-precision chips in mobile phones were refused to be manufactured by companies such as Moss Electric.

Ma Tian listened carefully and didn't say a word.

Until Nie Zhenyuan finished speaking, Ma Tian asked a question: "Speaking of which, they have so many companies united together, don't you have any awareness of it?"

Ma Tian didn't believe that they were united. Such a large team from different countries would always have flaws. Logically, Xia Wei shouldn't be so passive.

"Xia Wei was played, they disguised very well." Nie Zhenyuan sighed and talked about their internal summary.

They also reflected on this issue of Ma Tian internally, and even many people were held accountable, including General Manager Ren who was furious at the meeting.

To sum up, some people in Xia Wei were blinded by the superficial strength. Several years of "good weather and good harvests" have made some people look up and look down on their opponents.

For two years, they thought they were the boss because they had money, and they strongly guided the right to speak in front of suppliers, thinking that suppliers would not betray them. After all, who would have trouble with money?

When those supplier companies joined forces to cut off goods and refused to cooperate, they were dumbfounded. Their former arrogance was returned in full, and even stabbed.

Ma Tian shook his head, and was a little glad that he had made a good move (at the end of Chapter 104). Not only did he not enter the high-precision electronic products market, but he also let Xia Wei attract firepower in the front while he secretly developed in the wild.

Thinking of this, Ma Tian began to like Nie Zhenyuan more and more. Xia Wei is really a good company.

"Mr. Ma, this is roughly the situation. At present, our inventory plus returns may be enough to support our shipments for half a year. We must find a substitute within half a year, otherwise we can only reduce production until we, Xia Wei, come up with our own chips."

Nie Zhenyuan did not think that Xia Wei would collapse this time. He always believed that even if there were no high-precision chips from abroad, Xia Wei could come up with a substitute in two years.

This is Xia Wei, a technology company with tens of thousands of patents, hundreds of billions of funds, a large number of talents and scientific research capabilities.

Full of confidence and domineering.

But Ma Tian is more confident and domineering.

"No need to look for other replacements, Tianyu Xinghai will help you this time! Come with me!" After saying that, Ma Tian stood up and walked outside, and Nie Zhenyuan followed behind.

The two came to a secret elevator that led directly to the underground, and then walked in.

This elevator went directly to the underground of Tianyu Xinghai, and then the two took a small subway.

Nie Zhenyuan was stunned. The building under Tianyu Xinghai Company was really mysterious. It felt like a special base in a movie.

After getting off the small subway, the two took another elevator. From this, we can also see how secretive Ma Tian was about the lithography department!

After getting out of the elevator and walking a short distance, a large room with a large number of large machine tools, like a factory, appeared in front of them.

The two entered the dust removal room, and then put on dustproof clothes before entering the room. There were many scientific researchers in white clothes busy inside.

Seeing Ma Tian, ​​a man in blue came to Ma Tian and greeted him: "Mr. Ma!"

It was Wang Xinghua, the director of lithography research appointed by Ma Tian before.

Ma Tian nodded and said, "Show our guests our latest fruits."

"Please!" Wang Xinghua gestured to Nie Zhenyuan with his hand, then took the lead and walked forward.

After a while, the three of them came to a machine. Wang Xinghua looked at the machine in front of him and said, "This is our company's latest product TN-0902, which can already process 9nm chips."

After that, he said to a white-clothed man next to the console, "Xiao Lu, take a raw silicon lithography and show it."

"Okay!" Xiao Lu nodded, got up, took out a raw silicon wafer from the lab table, and put it into the machine.

After a while, the machine made a slight startup sound.

Wang Xinghua nodded and said to Ma Tian and Nie Zhenyuan, "You may need to wait a few minutes to see the finished product we just experimented with."

Ma Tian also said to Nie Zhenyuan, "The highest precision requirement for your main chip is 7nm, right? At present, Tianyu Xinghai can already achieve 9nm. In the next six months, I will work hard to break through it to 7nm. As for what chip you need, you have to design it yourself!"

Xia was for his own system, so he was sure that he knew what chip he needed, so Ma Tian didn't think of interfering.

"9nm?" Nie Zhenyuan was excited. He knew that Ma Tian had something. Although it was not the 7nm he had expected, it was only one order of magnitude away.

And there was still half a year left. If Ma Tian, ​​the great god, could help, it might be possible to make a breakthrough!

"Thank you so much, Mr. Ma. I'll thank you on behalf of our Xia Wei!" Nie Zhenyuan shook hands with Ma Tian vigorously, smiling. His mood at the moment was indescribable.

He was excited about solving Xia Wei's current predicament, and he also felt a dreamlike feeling of being too relaxed. The two feelings overlapped, and he could only shake the hand he held with Ma Tian.

Then Ma Tian quietly pulled it out and looked at the lithography machine in front of him.

The main function of the lithography machine is to expose silicon wafers. In short, here we can use three sentences to summarize what happens in the lithography machine:

1. Photomask: The lens group and the silicon wafer workbench will be precisely aligned and leveled.

2. The light source emits light: You can imagine it as a laser flashlight with several lights.

3. Move the workbench: Expose the silicon wafer in an orderly manner.

Three sentences cost more than 1 billion yuan for a photolithography machine, which naturally has its own reasons.

Although these three sentences are ordinary, they hide many pinnacles of human engineering, including the black technology developed by the Ma Tian system.

For example, the lens. The Zeiss lens with a surface fluctuation of no more than 0.05nm is the most similar masterpiece of the earth civilization to the three-body water droplet, and its flatness reaches the atomic level.

The difficulty coefficient is extremely high, and design, materials, processes, and assembly are indispensable.

Produced by Zeiss of Munich, Zeiss is the exclusive supplier of optical components for ASML, and Zeiss's photolithography machine optical components account for about 26% of ASML's product costs.

"Exclusive" means irreplaceable, and "26%" means extremely high cost.

From here, we can also see how awesome this lens is.

Of course, this technology was broken by Ma Tian and his team because they did not want to pay Zeiss.

Another example is alignment. Alignment requires a dual worktable system that can synchronize and expose. It is one of the magic weapons that Aismair defeated the Japanese photolithography machine manufacturers, and now it is also one of the magic weapons that Tianyu Xinghai defeated the Japanese photolithography machine manufacturers.

Another example is the most important light source - the sympathetic light waves emitted when the extreme ultraviolet light driven by a 60-kilowatt laser blasts liquid tin into plasma.

It is a special light source (Chapter 122) developed by Ma Tian based on the paper "A New High-Precision Laser Processing Research" awarded to him by the system at 10 million impact points. For this technology, a normal company will take at least 5 years to research.

There are many more, so I won't give examples here.

In short, it is not without reason that the photolithography machine is called the pinnacle of human mechanical work, and the price can reach tens of billions, which is definitely worth the money.

A few minutes later, the processed silicon wafer came out of the photolithography machine and entered the next process - baking, also known as post-baking.

The purpose of this step is to fully complete the photochemical reaction in the photoresist through heating, which can make up for the problem of insufficient exposure intensity.

At the same time, it can also reduce the circles of lines caused by the standing wave effect after the photolithography machine develops.

After post-baking, the previously exposed part is dissolved and removed, and the pattern on the photomask appears on the photoresist, and then rinsed with deionized water.

Finally, it is baked again, but this time it is called "hard film baking". Of course, this is for wet method. If it is dry etching with plasma, this step can be omitted.

After so many steps, it comes to observation accuracy and measurement, which is the most intuitive result that Ma Tian wants to show this time-lithography accuracy display.

The 9nm process is definitely not enough to be seen with an ordinary optical microscope, so everyone also came to the atomic force microscope stage.

The staff in white clothes put the silicon wafer that had just been processed for several steps on the microscope stage, and everyone could check the accuracy on it carefully through the instrument.

The measurement result of 9nm was displayed on the big screen.

Nie Zhenyuan didn't think that Ma Tian would be so mysterious and deceive him for a long time, that is, Tianyu Xinghai really has the technology to lithography 9nm precision chips.

Now as long as Xia Wei has a chip design drawing of his own, Tianyu Xinghai can at least help them make a chip with 9nm precision.