novelden Chapter 718 is great. On the road ahead, Little Ahoge will never be alone.
Chapter 718 is great. On the road ahead, Little Ahoge will never be alone.
"Huh? What's wrong? Have a lot of new people joined your team again?" Jiang Xia caught the faint noise and chatter coming from the receiver and scratched his head in confusion.
When we used to visit Dr. Lan Ying, the researchers loved writing silly poems with him. But what I heard today sounds a bit off.
"Sigh, you... were you so excited that you forgot about the 'Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Process Flow (Draft)' you wrote?"
"Huh?" Jiang Xia was taken aback.
Dr. Lan Ying's voice carried a hint of teasing: "You said it yourself, to make a usable chip, having only a lithography machine is not enough!"
"What I was saying?" Jiang Xia pulled out his notebook and flipped through it for a while. "Ah, I remember now. Besides the lithography machine, there's also a diffusion furnace and vacuum evaporation equipment!"
"However, I haven't made any process improvements to the last two pieces of equipment yet, have I?" Jiang Xia muttered to himself after flipping through his notebook, confirming that he had only written down the names and general requirements for these two pieces of equipment.
Dr. Lan Ying continued, "In order to produce the first batch of verification chips as soon as possible, I have borrowed all the people I can!"
A precision instrument factory is responsible for the temperature control system of the diffusion furnace; a Northeast Equipment Factory is responsible for the sealing of the evaporation chamber; and an institute of materials is responsible for researching high-purity gases and metal targets...
The lab is practically packed! Everyone's working overtime, just waiting for the lithography machine to 'draw' the pattern so we can move on to the next step!
Jiang Xia was a bit dumbfounded. He originally thought that he would sort out the lithography machine first and then tinker with the subsequent equipment. He never expected that Dr. Lan Ying and her team would have such strong initiative and actually managed to put together the "three carriages" for low-integration chip fabrication!
Yes, that's right. As you clever person have probably noticed, besides the three main pieces of equipment mentioned by the little guy, this process is missing an ion implanter, a chemical vapor deposition machine, and a complete set of testing equipment, such as those for testing the chip's electrical performance, signal-to-noise ratio, power consumption, etc...
However, our little ahoge waved his hand and simplified all the latter types.
Don't blame him for being so "stingy." Who wouldn't want the best?
The core of ion implantation is to accelerate impurity ions (such as boron and phosphorus) to a high-energy state of thousands or even tens of thousands of electron volts, so as to penetrate the silicon surface and achieve precise doping.
Providing a stable high-energy electric field alone is almost a pipe dream under current conditions, let alone generating a high-purity ion beam.
But! Hehehe, a diffusion furnace can temporarily fill in! It doesn't require complex energy acceleration; doping can be achieved through pure thermal motion.
Since current chips only contain around a hundred transistors and their dimensions are in the micrometer range, they have relatively high tolerance for errors in doping depth and concentration. While thermal diffusion accuracy is limited, it's sufficient for building simple early logic gates!
As for chemical vapor deposition? We still use a diffusion furnace! Although it requires precise manual control of the gas valves, the thin film generated by the reaction is directly deposited on the silicon wafer inside the furnace tube.
It is more than sufficient to meet the basic requirements of small-scale integrated circuits for insulating and conductive layers!
Now, we don't pursue perfection, we just pursue usability!
Little Ao Mao's motto is—"Not seeking the most suitable, but seeking usability!"
Is it reasonable? Absolutely!
"So, if the lithography machine goes online, then we'll be able to produce chips?"
Jiangxia's painful wails.
The first chip! Just thinking about how important it was, and he couldn't even be there... Little Ahoge started sadly banging on the mahogany table...
"Hey! Why didn't you ask more questions! Have you been neglecting your 'chip' business a bit too much...?"
That's true. Because of the presence of a group of experts, the busy Jiang Xia didn't interfere too much with the progress of his planned PMOS technology research.
However, this unexpected "laziness" turned out to be a stroke of genius in a way.
It's important to understand that in the 1960s, electronic technology was a nascent and emerging discipline, and the whole world was groping its way forward in a fog.
The transistor was only a little over a decade old, and the concept of integrated circuits was even newer and more complex. Fairchild Semiconductor, the bald-headed AG, had only produced its first practical integrated circuit last year; the technology was far from mature, and various process routes existed, with everyone essentially "feeling their way across the river." (It should be noted that Fairchild's internal prototypes were completed at the end of 1960, and small-scale shipments began in 1961. Therefore, in terms of timeline, they were actually faster.)
It is precisely against this backdrop of "the beginning of chaos" that our early accumulation of electronic technology has revealed a unique strength!
We are all starting from the same point. There is no absolutely mature path to follow, and no insurmountable technological gap!
The competition is about whose ideas are more advanced, whose execution is stronger, and whose ability to integrate resources and break through key nodes is faster!
On this brand new track, everyone is starting from scratch and sprinting for a short time. Although we started a little later, it's not insurmountable. Like a long-distance race that has just begun, the gap in the first few laps is far less despairing than it becomes later.
Furthermore, the lack of massive obstacles to the transformation of the vacuum tube industry allows us to embrace new technologies more quickly and concentrate resources on the forefront.
While Jiangxia, like a moth flapping its tiny wings vigorously, provided a clear and timely technological roadmap, it avoided extensive trial and error and wasted resources on the wrong path. Furthermore, it designed equipment parameters that were practical and suitable for the actual situation based on this roadmap.
He knew which technological paths were dead ends, such as pursuing perfect ion implantation, which was impossible at the time.
Which obstacles can be circumvented, for example, by using a diffusion furnace with manual control to temporarily replace CVD and ion implantation.
Which are the core aspects that we must work hard to master, such as the precision of photolithography alignment?
In addition, our national system has enabled us to quickly integrate top talents and resources from the Academy of Sciences, universities, and factories, forming a powerful synergy for tackling key problems.
Dr. Lan Ying's ability to quickly borrow so many people is a testament to this high level of efficiency!
It would be strange if it weren't strong!
"So..." Jiang Xia rubbed his forehead, which was a little red from the bump, and laughed self-deprecatingly.
"My 'laziness' is, in a way, because I trust my comrades' abilities and give them room to perform, allowing them to roll up their sleeves and get to work?"
"That……"
Jiang Xia took out the execution order and looked at the large red seal with circles inside circles on it.
"Hehehe, patterns can be copied! I believe our comrades have a much smarter solution!"
This kid finally realized that his greatest value might not be in personally debugging every piece of equipment, but in standing at a higher level, pointing out the direction, providing key ideas, and then trusting and relying on the best brains and hands of this era to create miracles!
Although he did the same thing with the "laser gyroscope" project, it now seems that his approach was somewhat conservative.
"I'll just make promises, and the bigwigs and comrades will carry them out?"
"It's just a cricket chip. I can make more and better things in the future!"
"We can witness it slowly in time; that would be a wonderful thing!"
"Huh? Just bumping into the table can make you understand so many things, then what about the future..." Jiang Xia stroked the mahogany table, and some strange ideas popped into his head again...