A big country of aerospace with black technology.

Chen Shiqi and his pressure vessel factory seemed to pay more attention to this order, which was not particularly large, than it seemed on the surface.

It only took two and a half months to complete the manufacturing of the large-scale pressure synthesis furnace.

"We spent a lot of effort and finally completed what you asked for half a month ahead of schedule."

Chen Shiqi stood next to Zhang Xingyang with some energy and said.

"You have worked hard."

Zhang Xingyang patted the other party's shoulder and said.

The job of manufacturing pressure vessels is not that easy.

Especially some high-standard pressure vessels.

It is even more difficult to manufacture.

Normally, these devices take half a year to produce.

Zhang Xingyang only allowed the other party to compress the time to three months after giving them double the payment.

This is calculated based on their 24-hour overtime work.

I don’t know how they managed to compress another half a month on this basis.

"Originally, according to the estimated manufacturing time, delivery should take half a month."

Chen Shiqi explained.

"But more than two months ago, a set of pressure vessels ordered by a chemical plant was canceled."

"We recalculated and found that it only takes a little time to modify it to meet your requirements."

"This way we can deliver the goods half a month in advance."

Zhang Xingyang only learned the detailed process of this matter after hearing this.

The domestic chemical industry is about to reach the point of reaching the sky.

The capacity of this set of pressure vessels is very small.

It does not meet the standards of recently built chemical plants.

At this time, domestic chemical plants basically used large or even super-large pressure vessels.

The output of chemical products is measured in hundreds of thousands of tons.

Take Longteng Group’s carbon fiber substrate and fiber filament as an example.

Those large chemical factories can produce tens of millions of tons of various types of chemical fibers every year.

Under the squeeze of these super-large chemical plants, small chemical plants that could still survive cautiously in the past naturally continued to close down and merge.

In fact, it is difficult for small chemical plants to achieve a good level in terms of emissions and environmental protection.

Various toxic and harmful substances are either discharged into the air or into water bodies.

In accordance with the increasingly stringent environmental protection policies in China.

Even if large chemical groups do not squeeze them, it will be difficult for them to survive.

Their limited funds do not support the harmless treatment of emissions while completing the upgrade of production equipment.

So this set of relatively small pressure vessels.

In this way, it fell into Zhang Xingyang's hands.

"As for the payment, we will call you after we complete the test."

Zhang Xingyang couldn't wait to see the working status of the reactor.

After giving the instructions, the reaction vessel, which occupies a large area, was pulled into the factory.

The dark blue colored steel factory building is very tall.

Enough to accommodate reactors with vertical heights up to 15 meters.

A 15-meter-high reactor can only be said to be mini compared to the dozens or hundreds of meters in large chemical plants.

However, considering that it will produce high-purity gallium oxide in the future.

This shortcoming can be tolerated.

You know, the world's gallium production last year was just over one hundred tons.

This is after taking into account all rough gallium and fine gallium.

The output of gallium used to produce semiconductors is only more than 60 tons.

These galliums are basically used as gallium nitride.

Production has become a very important component in military equipment.

Now, after this set of equipment is put into operation.

According to Zhang Xingyang's prediction.

One furnace can produce more than 20 tons of high-purity gallium oxide wafers.

The price of these chips is comparable to gold!

On the market, one ton of unrefined crude gallium is worth more than $32.

In fact, during this period, the price of gallium was declining.

When the price of crude gallium was crazy in 2001, it even climbed to a sky-high price of nearly US$250 million per ton!

Even at today's rock bottom prices for crude gallium.

A furnace of gallium produced by Zhang Xingyang and his colleagues is worth more than 640 million US dollars.

Not to mention that what Zhang Xingyang produces is actually high-purity gallium oxide wafers with extremely high added value.

The value of these chips can increase more than ten times.

It is almost the same as the difference between purified silica and round wafers.

The former is nothing but gravel, while the latter is an important raw material for the chip industry.

From a material perspective, there is not much difference between the two.

But the value has changed dramatically.

This is the added value given to modern industry.

The same is true for high-purity gallium oxide wafers.

Crude gallium is nothing more than the most basic raw material.

Basically they are by-products of electrolytic aluminum.

High-purity gallium oxide wafers are the source components of fourth-generation semiconductors.

Master this technology.

It's like raising a hen at home that can lay golden eggs.

It generates more than $4 billion in revenue every year.

The cost of raw materials is estimated to not exceed RMB 10 billion.

In other words, this is a huge revenue that will exceed 300 billion yuan per year.

Of course, these earnings are theoretical.

Because in today’s world market, it is difficult to consume so many high-purity gallium oxide wafers.

At present, except Zhang Xingyang and the others.

In the world, few people have applied gallium oxide to practical applications.

Most of the first-mover countries are still repeatedly polishing second-generation semiconductors, such as gallium arsenide.

The third generation of semiconductor gallium nitride is still exclusive to technologically powerful countries.

Everyone is basically still tossing around the various applications of gallium nitride.

Especially in the field of radar.

The domestic development of active phased array radar is closely related to the development of gallium nitride components.

In addition to domestic, look at the world.

In other words, Yingjiang has made some achievements in the phased array radar.

But compared with domestic.

It's still a bad move.

If gallium oxide components complete mass production development work.

Then other countries in the world will be far behind China.

Originally, they could still see a little of the taillights ahead.

But once gallium oxide technology comes out, they may not even be able to see the taillights.

"The first round of testing is ready and ready to begin."

Su Xiao led people to conduct a simple inspection of the pressure vessel and then walked towards Zhang Xingyang.

Zhang Xingyang looked at the record form in his hand, raised his head and said:

"Then let's get started."

The two most critical indicators of pressure vessels.

temperature, pressure.

As a reaction site of high temperature and high pressure.

The container must withstand temperatures of around 700 degrees and hundreds of atmospheres of pressure.

There can't be anything that could go wrong.

Even a tiny crack.

All may lead to extremely terrible disasters.

You must know that under high temperature and high pressure, even micron-level cracks can occur.

All will have uncontrollable consequences.

Su Xiao and others took the test valve test of the equipment. The temperature inside the reactor began to rise.

At the same time, gas is continuously input and pressurized.

The pressure was increased to the design reaction temperature before stopping.

This state will remain for a period of time to detect whether any problems will occur.

Chen Shiqi also looked at the various indicators of the reactor nervously.

Although they have undergone a series of testing before leaving the factory.

No problems occurred.

However, problems arise during transportation of this large equipment on the road.

That's all too common.

So he was also very nervous.

If a problem does arise, then they are likely to lose high-quality large customers like the institute.

The test lasted about thirty minutes in total.

Fortunately, no problems occurred.

The reactor is in good operating condition.

Chen Shiqi finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Next test, do you want to conduct a gallium oxide gas test?"

Su Xiao didn't look at Chen Shiqi, who was sweating on his forehead, and asked Zhang Xingyang directly.

"Two more tests."

Zhang Xingyang said somewhat cautiously.

"Making sure there aren't any issues going on with the gallium oxide production."

The raw material of gallium oxide is for today's research institutes.

Not cheap.

Because it is produced in very small quantities, it only appears as a by-product of electrolytic aluminum.

They are in such high demand that they can easily run out in no time.

Want to splurge on gallium raw materials.

Then at least until they start gallium mining.

Liang Yi has just obtained the mining rights for minerals.

Construction work is still ongoing in various aspects.

It will take at least four months until the first batch of crude gallium leaves the factory.

The metal vapor deposition method currently used by Zhang Xingyang.

All over the world, it is considered deviant.

By applying pressure, the gallium oxide gas is attached to the metal surface.

Thus, a single-piece wafer with uniform thickness is obtained.

"It's better to be careful." Su Xiao nodded and went back for the second experiment.

This time the experiment lasted longer.

It took an hour to complete the test.

After checking to confirm that there were no problems with the reactor.

Su Xiao just started the third test.

The test temperature and pressure this time were close to the working limit of the reactor.

But the good news is that it still withstood the test of such harsh work.

It still lasted for more than an hour without any problems.

Chen Shiqi's originally gloomy face suddenly cleared up when the results came out.

"Dean Zhang, the quality of our equipment is definitely world-class!"

“No quality issues whatsoever!”

Looking at Chen Shiqi who kept boasting, Zhang Xingyang smiled and said:

"The quality of your products is indeed good, and the payment can be sent to you today."

Chen Shiqi quickly waved his hand and said, "Don't worry about the money. You can call us anytime."

Although the other party said this, the institute has rarely defaulted on funds in recent years.

Zhang Xingyang immediately called Liang Yi and told him about it.

Let him give money to Chen Shiqi's factory.

Seeing as they worked so hard to deliver the goods half a month ahead of schedule.

Zhang Xingyang also specifically asked Liang Yi to pay 20% more for the goods.

Think of it as a reward for early delivery.

If you want others to work hard for you, you cannot have less money.

Chen Shiqi, who still wanted to have a relationship, was sent away.

Zhang Xingyang immediately started the production of the first batch of gallium oxide wafers.

A large amount of power is transmitted to the device.

The reactor begins to heat up, and it will take several minutes before it reaches operating heat.

"In the future we must transform it to be able to receive power wirelessly."

Su Xiao looked at the equipment, stood next to Zhang Xingyang and complained.

In the past few months, many of the institute's equipment have been transformed into wireless power transmission methods.

Everyone has found that this form has many advantages.

First of all, there is no need to worry about equipment plug or cable failure, which may cause problems in the experiment.

The second is the ability to reach the working power of the equipment almost instantly.

Especially for some high-power equipment, it saves a lot of time.

"Let's talk about this later. The transformation requires a lot of gallium oxide semiconductors."

Zhang Xingyang said noncommittally.

"When the operating temperature is reached, the next step is to pressurize."

The metal vapor deposition method is almost completely different from traditional manufacturing methods.

It's like the inversion method used by Su Xiao and others before.

After heating and melting the gallium oxide, it is poured into the mold.

It sounds similar to how steel is smelted.

However, there are many problems in the smelting of gallium oxide.

First of all, the inversion molding method must be carried out at high temperature.

The temperature is much higher than the metal vapor phase method used by Zhang Xingyang.

It reached 1800 degrees!

The very expensive metal iridium must be used as the crucible.

Smelting gallium oxide once requires hundreds of thousands of yuan of iridium metal.

This also leads to the high price of gallium oxide produced by this production method.

This is also an important reason why Zhang Xingyang does not want to adopt this production method. ,

"I really want to see what's going on inside now."

Lidya Su said with some emotion.

They can't see anything inside the reactor now.

We can only look at the various data of the reactor to infer the production status of the crystals.

"Judging from the weight detector, crystals have been formed on top."

Zhang Xingyang looked at the slowly increasing weight data and said calmly.

Crystal production is a relatively slow process.

Especially this vapor phase growth method.

Compared with the reverse molding method used by Su Xiao and the others, the speed is even slower.

It takes about one or two hours to produce a furnace of gallium oxide single wafer using the reverse mold method.

But the metal vapor deposition method, if you want to completely grow it.

It takes at least one day and one night.

"Are you going to keep vigil here today?"

Su Xiao looked at Zhang Xingyang who didn't want to leave to rest and asked.

It was already close to eight o'clock in the evening.

Although this time point is nothing to the researchers.

However, it will basically take until tomorrow night for the gallium oxide single crystal wafer in the reactor to be completely grown.

Su Xiao was a little worried about Zhang Xingyang's health.

"Stay until 12 o'clock. This period is more dangerous at the beginning. I want to watch it personally."

Zhang Xingyang looked at his watch and said.

Within the reactor, the reaction was going on quietly.

It almost represents the future of fourth-generation semiconductors, and there is no room for Zhang Xingyang to be careless. (End of chapter)