Military industrial hegemony

Chapter 1089 Fabs and Silicon Wafers
Of course, there are still many projects brought about by supercomputers, such as the construction of a fab project that Jiang Chen and the others attach more importance to.In fact, this project was not proposed by Jiang Chen first, of course he had this idea, but the one who really proposed it was a returned student named Chu Tianyu.After he came back from studying abroad, he happened to catch up with the establishment of the high-tech industry pilot zone led by Jiang Chen.He also resolutely quit the job assigned to him with high salary and high development prospects, came to Nanshan, and obtained some venture capital investment through his talent, and established a technology company.Originally, they wanted to engage in the development and research of this kind of microelectronic products. Who would have thought that there is no mature silicon wafer material in China.But Chu Tianyu thought it was a business opportunity, so he found Meng Yuling, the CEO of the investment company, and explained his whole plan to him.

Although Meng Yuling doesn't know much about this high-tech industry, she is a person who has been abroad, and she is keenly aware of the huge business opportunities in it.Of course, as the CEO, she didn't make up her mind or report to Jiang Chen, but used her relationship abroad to carefully understand the silicon wafer-related materials and conduct a preliminary evaluation.After a negative understanding, Meng Yuling believes that this will have a very big role in promoting economic utilization, promoting the development of Nanshan, and even the entire country's industrial development strategy.However, because the project was too large, she reported it to Jiang Chen in time.

Jiang Chen was actually a little hesitant after listening to it. In his opinion, it is too early to be dissatisfied with the development of the silicon wafer industry.Moreover, the production, processing and subsequent use of silicon wafers require very high technical requirements. With Nanshan's current technical level, I am afraid that it will not be able to set foot in this silicon wafer industry for a while.However, after hearing the news from Mr. Zhu, Mr. Ma, Lin Xiaonan, and the electronic components and integrated circuit laboratory in the computer center, they couldn't sit still, and they all came to Jiang Chen to ask for approval and implementation of this project.For the development of computer technology, wafers processed by silicon are excellent carriers for integrated circuits.It is also one of the stepping stones in the manufacture of micro-small large-scale integrated circuits and chips, so how can they not be excited.

There are needs and opinions below, so Jiang Chen naturally can't ignore it, but Jiang Chen still has doubts about participating in the development of this Epistar.So he brought together Chu Tianyu's computer center (computer technology research and development laboratory), electronic components and integrated circuit laboratory, and Jiang Chen to discuss the feasibility of this project together.

Wafer refers to the silicon wafer used in the production of silicon semiconductor integrated circuits. Because of its circular shape, it is called a wafer.Various circuits and component structures can be processed on silicon wafers, and become IC products with specific electrical functions.The raw material of the wafer is silicon, and the surface of the earth's crust has an inexhaustible amount of silicon dioxide.

Silicon exists widely in rocks and gravel in the form of silicate or silicon dioxide in nature.The manufacture of silicon wafers can be summarized into three basic steps, namely silicon extraction and purification, single crystal silicon growth, and wafer molding.The first is silicon purification, put the sand and gravel raw materials into the electric arc furnace with a temperature above 2000 degrees, and then add the carbon element raw materials.At high temperatures, the oxygen in the carbon and silicon dioxide in the sand combines with the carbon, resulting in pure silicon with a purity of about 98%.But this level of silicon is not pure enough for microelectronic devices, because the electrical properties of semiconductor materials are very sensitive to the concentration of impurities, so the extracted silicon is further purified.Thus, polysilicon with a purity of up to 99.999999999% can be obtained, which is also called electronic grade silicon.

Next is the growth of single crystal silicon, the most commonly used method is called the Czochralski method.The so-called Czochralski method is to use a high-temperature heater to dissolve high-purity polysilicon.Then, the crucible is used to rotate the polysilicon melt, a seed crystal is immersed in it, and the seed crystal is rotated in the opposite direction by the drawing rod, and at the same time, it is slowly and vertically pulled out from the silicon melt.The molten polysilicon will stick to the bottom of the seed crystal, grow up continuously according to the direction of the lattice arrangement of the seed crystal, and grow into a single crystal silicon rod with the same lattice direction as the internal lattice of the seed crystal after cooling.After growing by the Czochralski method, the single crystal rod will be cut according to the appropriate size, and then ground to remove the concave and convex cut marks, and then chemical mechanical polishing process is used to make at least one side smooth as a mirror, and the wafer manufacturing is completed up.

Although it is so easy, its actual production process and related technologies are very complicated.For example, the diameter of the produced single crystal silicon rod is determined by the pulling speed and rotation speed, the slower the speed, the larger the diameter of the grown single crystal silicon rod.The thickness of the cut wafer is related to the diameter, and the thickness of the wafer will increase with the increase of the diameter.So how to control the entire speed has become the key to the production process.And the thickness of each wafer is only one millimeter or even thinner.And the larger the diameter of the wafer, the more ICs can be produced on the same wafer, and its production cost will be greatly reduced.Of course, this requires higher material technology and wafer production technology for purification, and the difficulty is naturally greater.

After repeated discussions and studies, Jiang Chen finally made up his mind to implement the project.However, such a large project cannot be realized by Chu Tianyu, a small technology company, and requires the joint efforts of all parties.First of all, of course, is the capital aspect, especially the foreign exchange aspect.Because for this kind of wafer production, we do not have any relevant and mature technologies in our country to learn from, especially the new generation of wafer production technology.Therefore, many production equipment and production technologies need to be imported from abroad.Of course, this can be entrusted to Chu Tianyu. He is familiar with foreign conditions and the production situation of the entire industry, so it is most appropriate to entrust him with the responsibility.It's just that in terms of funds, they still need Jiang Chen's support.

And because of the relatively large investment, Jiang Chen and his company had to discuss this plan for a long time before approving it.Of course, if Jiang Chen made the decision, no one in the company would object.But this is not Jiang Chen's style, nor is it the company culture he wants.What he wants is an equal working environment, at least when discussing things, he always discusses the matter as it stands, and does not use other external factors to affect the results.After final discussion by all parties, the total investment of the entire fab construction project will exceed one billion yuan.Jiang Chen and his company are responsible for 80.00% of the funds, and also own 70.00% of the shares.The local government and relevant departments jointly contribute 20.00% of the capital in the form of in-kind assets, while Chu Tianyu's company accounts for [-]%.Of course, they don't need to invest in the [-]% of the shares, they just need to be responsible.Although it is free, they have undertaken most of the work, which is quite reasonable.

As for the local government and relevant departments, it was the result of Jiang Chen and his team's communication.Locally, it is mainly to provide corresponding help and services to the construction of fabs.From the nature of the enterprise, although it is also a high-tech company or factory.But it is indeed a mining enterprise, because its main job is to mine resources and then carry out refining production.So this involves a series of issues. For example, in terms of energy, especially the electric arc furnace, which consumes a lot of electricity, its electricity consumption is not a small number.There's also the impact on the environment, and a host of other issues.As for the relevant departments, here is mainly the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry.To put it bluntly, this project can be regarded as a major national project with very high strategic significance.Therefore, for such a major project, the above must be very concerned.Through negotiation, the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry invested a small amount of funds and some relevant technical materials, and took part of the shares.Of course, this is also beneficial to the development of this fab. With the joint guarantee from above and below, this project can proceed smoothly.

(End of this chapter)