bookbashuk Chapter 280 Silicon Production
Chapter 280 Silicon Production
Li Yang led his colleagues at the United Technology Center and began to manufacture those core-making tools.
Under his command, the workers in the machining workshop were very motivated and worked day and night to process various parts.
The brand new CNC machine tools are roaring, cutting fluid is splashing, metal chips are flying, and those precision parts that once could only be operated manually are now being formed one by one under the operation of the machines.
Li Yang appears in the workshop from time to time, carefully checking each process and personally demonstrating some key steps.
His slightly rough big hands moved smoothly in front of the machine tool, as if he was born to do this job.
"Mr. Zhang, pay attention to the size of this hole. The tolerance should be within 0.01mm!"
"Xiao Liu, the extra burrs must be removed carefully. If they affect the accuracy, they need to be reworked!"
While giving instructions, Li Yang did not forget to encourage everyone, "Come on, brothers! As long as we work together, we can overcome any difficulties!"
In this way, under his leadership, each part became more perfect and gradually took shape.
On the other hand, Li Yang's "secret weapon" - the CNC processing plant in the small world, is also running at high speed.
With time flowing ten times faster, the production efficiency there is simply amazing.
Li Yang only needs to stay in there for an hour or two every day, and half a day has already passed in the outside world.
CNC machine tools work day and night as if they never get tired. Some particularly precise and high-tech core components are almost all produced in this magical space.
As for some conventional parts, Li Yang handed them over to the supporting workshop of the United Technology Center.
There, too, machines were roaring and the work was in full swing.
With the joint efforts of everyone, the tens of thousands of components needed to manufacture chip equipment are being improved at a speed visible to the naked eye.
At the same time, Li Yang was also in charge of an extremely important task - the refining of silicon.
You know, the basic materials of chips are these seemingly ordinary chemical elements.
Silicon is the element whose reserves on Earth are second only to oxygen. It is widely found in rocks and minerals such as sand, quartz, and feldspar.
But natural silicon is often mixed with various impurities. In order to manufacture chips, it must be purified to more than 99.9999%, which is the famous "six nines"?1?8
This requires a series of complex smelting and purification processes.
First, quartz sand and coke are mixed in a certain proportion and carbon thermally reduced at a high temperature of 2000 degrees Celsius.
Silicon dioxide is reduced to elemental silicon, while carbon monoxide gas is produced.
Then, these metallurgical grade crude silicon containing more than 98% needs to be further purified through processes such as vapor deposition.
It can only be used in chip manufacturing when the impurity content drops below one part per million.
The entire process requires large-scale equipment such as electric arc furnaces, vapor deposition furnaces, and polysilicon ingot furnaces.
Not to mention the auxiliary processes such as analysis, testing, chemical treatment, etc.
For the industrial level in the 60s, this was undoubtedly a huge challenge!
But for Li Yang, these are not problems.
Relying on his photographic memory and the "advanced technology" in the small world space, he built the first electric arc furnace in just two weeks.
It was a huge monster with a diameter of two meters and a height of three meters.
At first glance, it looks like a time machine from a science fiction movie.
The outer shell is made of stainless steel and lined with refractory bricks and graphite materials?
The most critical parts are three graphite electrodes with a diameter of 50 cm, which are insulated from the furnace wall by special electrode clamps.
When a huge current passes through, an arc crackles between the electrodes, generating temperatures far exceeding 2000 degrees Celsius.
Under the scorching heat of this "artificial sun", the mixed quartz sand and coke are slowly poured into the furnace.
As the temperature continues to rise, the molten silicon dioxide begins to reduce and elemental silicon gradually precipitates.
There are also iron outlets and slag outlets at the bottom of the furnace to discharge the molten silicon liquid and slag liquid in time.
Next, it will take 2-3 rounds of electric arc furnace smelting to remove most of the impurities and obtain more than 98% metallurgical grade silicon.
Li Yang stood in front of the electric arc furnace, looking at this "giant" with excitement on his face.
Every inch of metal and every screw is the result of his hard work.
From drawing design to parts procurement and even the final installation and debugging, he did everything himself.
When the electrode head slowly descended and the white electric arc jumped in the furnace, Li Yang almost burst into tears.
He knew that this was the first ray of hope for the new Yan country's chip industry, and also the beginning of his dream come true!
The workers were also shocked by this "high-tech product" before their eyes.
"This is incredible! Can this thing really produce silicon?"
"Oh my god! This temperature is almost as high as the surface of the sun, right? How many degrees is that?"
"Engineer Li, you are really our lucky star! With you here, how can our electronics industry take off?" Facing everyone's admiration, Li Yang smiled modestly and continued to work.
In the subsequent purification stage, he successively manufactured vapor deposition furnaces, polysilicon casting furnaces and other equipment.
These are the key to further purifying metallurgical-grade crude silicon to electronic grade.
The vapor deposition furnace can deposit silicon on a special silicon core rod using hydrogen, silicon tetrachloride and other materials at a high temperature of more than 1000 degrees to produce polycrystalline silicon with a purity of up to 99.9999%.
The polysilicon ingot furnace can melt the polysilicon again, directionally solidify it, and eventually grow it into single crystal silicon rods with a diameter of 8 inches and a purity of up to 99.9999999%.
Such high-purity silicon material can be called "good material" for chip manufacturing.
In this way, under Li Yang's careful operation, furnace after furnace of high-purity silicon material was continuously refined.
Whenever the silvery, crystal clear silicon ingot rises from the furnace, it always draws bursts of exclamations.
Everyone rushed to gather around and marveled at it. The silicon crystals, as dazzling as gemstones, seemed like the crystallization of technology from the future!
What is even more exciting is that the assembly of the core-making equipment has also entered the final stage!
Under the leadership of Li Yang, comrades from the United Technology Center began the assembly of chip equipment.
This is an extremely complex and sophisticated project that requires close cooperation among technicians from many different fields.
Li Yang divided everyone into several groups, each group was responsible for assembling a type of equipment?1?8
The lithography machine team is led by Li Yang himself. As the most critical equipment in the process, it has extremely high requirements for assembly accuracy and cleanliness.
Li Yang and several mechanical technicians put on clean suits, gloves and masks and walked carefully into the assembly room.
There were several large wooden boxes neatly stacked, containing all the parts needed to manufacture lithography machines.
Under Li Yang's command, the technicians began to open the packages and take out the parts inside.
"Xiao Liu, bring the base bracket over here, and be careful not to touch the ground!"
"Lao Zhang, the optical system of the photoetching head is now in your hands. Be careful when aligning it!" Everyone performed their duties and began the intense and orderly assembly.
Li Yang shuttled between them, sometimes leaning over to observe, and sometimes taking action himself.
I saw him first fix the base bracket to the optical platform with bolts, and repeatedly check the flatness and verticality of the bracket.
Then, he carefully placed the spherical bearing, motor and optical system of the lithography head into the bracket one by one, and used a screwdriver to fine-tune the optical path.
Next, he installed the stage, alignment system, exposure light and other auxiliary equipment.
He was very cautious in every step, fearing that something might go wrong.
After all, this is the first domestically produced lithography machine, which is related to the future of integrated circuits in Xinyan Country!
In this way, an optical exposure device gradually took shape.
The first thing to come out was a photolithography machine.
This is the number one equipment for chip manufacturing, and is responsible for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers.
It looks like a cannon and is equipped with a high-precision optical system inside.
When the mask is installed and the silicon wafer coated with photoresist is loaded, the ultraviolet light beam will pass through the mask and accurately transfer the circuit pattern to the silicon wafer.
Through repeated photolithography, complex integrated circuits are eventually built on silicon wafers.
After photolithography, a series of processing is required, including development, etching, and ion implantation.
Li Yang and his team successively manufactured developing machines, plasma etchers, ion implanters and other equipment.
Each one of them embodies the wisdom and sweat of the Chinese people in the 60s.
Although they seem a bit crude and clumsy compared to the equipment of their Western counterparts in the 21st century, they can already be called the "cutting-edge technology" of this era!
Looking back, the history of human beings mastering chip technology is actually not long.
In 1947, Shockley and others at Bell Labs invented the transistor, ushering in the semiconductor era.
In 1958, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments integrated the first chip.
Since then, the scale and performance of integrated circuits have continued to increase, and electronic products have changed with each passing day.
However, in that era, chip technology was basically monopolized by Europe and the United States.
Although the Russian bear has conducted research, progress has been slow due to constraints in its system and industrial base.
Although research on the Oriental Foot Basin Chicken began in the 20s, the first production line was not built until the 50s.
As for the New Yan Kingdom, although a semiconductor research group was established as early as 1956, due to the technological strength at the time, it was not until the mid-60s that the project to develop the first integrated circuit was officially launched.
However, Li Yang's sudden appearance undoubtedly pressed the "fast forward button" for this process?1?8
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