Super Copy of Great Power Technology

Chapter 76 Chip tape-out completed
In general residential or commercial buildings, the basement is usually used as an underground parking lot, and the area of ​​each floor is only slightly less than the building's floor area.However, the situation of this experimental building is obviously different. The area of ​​the basement is much larger than the area of ​​the upper building.

"Actually, the main body of this experimental building is the three underground floors. All key equipment and confidential projects are arranged underground. It is normal for the area to be larger. The floors above the ground are offices, conference rooms and the like. We need a place." Zhou Wanda spoke and explained the importance of underground construction to Qiao Ruida.

The configuration of the dust-free workshop here is quite high-end. The surrounding walls are painted with milky white special dust-free paint, the floor is covered with light blue epoxy floor paint, and aluminum alloy square tube keels and aluminum plastic are used on the ceiling. The surface layer of the board, air conditioning vents, return air vents, and lamps are evenly distributed among them and look very coordinated.On the ground, along a straight line, thousands of pieces of equipment, large and small, are installed.At this time, all equipment is turned on, and hundreds of staff wearing dust-free suits are walking around and busy.

Seeing this situation, Qiao Ruida suddenly felt that the 600 million tape-out fee was not expensive at all.

"How come there are so many equipments here? Do you need so many equipments to produce a small chip?"

"This is a chip production test line, consisting of 1216 pieces of equipment. It is mainly used for chip tape-out testing, exploration of new processes and new technologies, and training of microelectronics students. This is just a test line, and the number of equipment is much smaller. If it is a regular production line of a wafer foundry, the number of equipment must be at least 3000 units to ensure uninterrupted high-volume production of chips."

The speaker is Academician Wang. This chip production line was built under his leadership. It can be said that he knows every piece of equipment and every conveyor belt here.

Academician Wang brought Qiao Ruida and Zhou Wanda to the beginning of the production line and continued to introduce: "Our chip production line is based on a 0.13μm production line, so it still uses six-inch wafers. Now Mainstream international chip production lines already use eight-inch or even [-]-inch wafers, which have huge advantages in terms of yield and production cost."

"This is just a tape-out test, not mass production, so only 30 wafers are used. The step currently being carried out is glue application, that is, using a glue applicator to evenly apply photoresist on the surface of the wafer. The next step is the first photolithography with a photolithography machine, followed by steps such as development, etching, and ion implantation.”

Academician Wang is worthy of being a veteran professor, with solid basic knowledge, outstanding eloquence, and explanations in simple and profound terms. Even Qiao Ruida, a newcomer who came into contact with chip production for the first time, understood everything clearly.

In this way, Qiao Ruida followed Academician Wang and ran through the chip production process from beginning to end.Due to the need to use multiple exposure technology, the steps of glue coating, photolithography, development, etc. have to go back and forth several times, during which the mask and some doping materials have to be replaced, which takes a very long time.So when 30 six-inch wafers completed all the processes and walked off the production line, it was already evening.

The processed silicon wafer has some colorful etching patterns on the surface, which looks very beautiful.Academician Wang personally put the 30 silicon wafers into a sealed container and sealed them, and then said: "It's getting late today, so let's go here. We will do cutting and packaging testing tomorrow morning. We will know if this tape-out is successful at that time.”

Qiao Ruida followed a group of staff and walked out of the dust-free workshop, then lined up to wait for the elevator to return to the first floor.

"It's only one floor high from the first floor to the first floor, and you have to queue up to take the elevator. This is too weird. Can't you just take the stairs?" "What do you know? The dust-free workshop itself is five meters high." Six meters, there is an intermediate layer above for installing air conditioning, ventilation and dust removal equipment. In other words, there is at least a vertical height of more than ten meters from the negative floor to the ground. More importantly, due to the need for confidentiality, ordinary stairs It is only used for emergency escape and is closed at ordinary times, so everyone can only queue up and take the elevator up and down."

While waiting in line, Qiao Ruida opened Goldfinger and brought up the gallery interface, where there were more than 1000 brand-new photos taken today.The content of the photo is exactly the set of chip production equipment in the dust-free workshop next door.

"It is estimated that these devices will not be used in a few years, unless one day Reda Technology gets involved in the field of chip production. It is better to create a folder and save it to be prepared."

Thinking of this, Qiao Ruida thought, and a folder called "Chip Production Equipment" appeared in the gallery interface, and then all the more than 1000 photos taken today were transferred to this folder.The function of Goldfinger is still very powerful. Just talking about this gallery, there is no storage space limit at all. It seems that no matter how many pictures you want, it can be installed.I also don’t know where to store the various knowledge I learned through shooting. It seems that no matter how much I stuff in, there will be no shortage of storage space, or the phenomenon of being lost and forgotten.

"Classmate Qiao, what are you thinking about? Get in the elevator quickly."

"Come on, come on. I've been standing all day today. I'm so tired. I almost fell asleep just now."

Of course what Qiao Ruida said at this time was an excuse, but it was not a lie. Today, following the processing steps, running back and forth on the chip production line, she walked too much and was indeed very tired.After returning to dormitory 309 on the Yanyuan campus, Qiao Ruida fell asleep and didn't even bother to eat dinner.

After a good night's sleep, the next morning, Qiao Ruida followed Academician Wang again and walked through the chip packaging and testing process.In order to facilitate the welding test of the chip, Qiao Ruida chose the TQFP package, which is a package with a black square in the middle and dozens of pins densely connected around it.

After more than two hours of waiting, Academician Wang placed a plastic box containing dozens of chips in front of Qiao Ruida and said: "A total of 30 chips were cut out of 3300 silicon wafers. After our detailed According to the test, there are only 87 qualified products, and the yield rate is less than 3%. Now, the qualified products are all here. Of course, these are only qualified products in production. They have perfectly realized the structure on the chip design drawing. Can they meet the design requirements? , you still need to take it back and install it and test it before you know."

"Okay, thank you, Academician Wang. I'll take it back and test it right now."

Qiao Ruida signed her name on the delivery agreement, then picked up the box containing the chip, said goodbye to Zhou Wanda and Academician Wang, and then drove away from the Daxing campus.

(End of this chapter)