Galaxy Technology Empire

Chapter 95 Chip Tape-out

"Oh yeah!" Zheng Xinwang shouted excitedly. It took him more than half a month to finally carve out the original piece he was responsible for.

"Is it done?" Zhao Gong came over quickly and asked.

Zheng Xinwang nodded excitedly: "I have asked the instrument to check it three times, and it is exactly the same as the star map design."

"Great, prepare to install the carbon nano-needle and inversion mold immediately." Zhao Gong patted Zheng Xinwang on the shoulder and ordered.

"No problem." Zheng Xinwang and several others quickly went to prepare.

Installing the carbon nano needle is to inject silver atoms into the engraved circuit groove as the control circuit of C31, and then introduce C31. In this way, an original carbon nano print head is completed.

The reverse mold is actually because the original carbon nanoprinting head they carved out is exactly the same as the design drawing.

Anyone who has used a seal knows that the words or patterns on the seal are opposite to the printed words or patterns.

Therefore, if the reverse molding is not performed, the circuit printed on the original piece will be opposite to the design drawing. Although this can be used, it is still necessary to reverse the molding to avoid unnecessary trouble.

The original film was processed very quickly by the carbon nano-needle. In just over half an hour, Zheng Xinwang and others completed the installation of the carbon nano-needle.

The next step is to directly use the carbon nanoprinting head for reverse mold printing.

After printing the original film, the printing head of the original film was made on top of the original film.

In this way, the printing head of one layer of circuit is completed, and the printing head can be installed on the circuit printer for debugging.

Of course, for the sake of efficiency, a circuit printer cannot have only one printing head. After all, a printing head can only print one chip at a time.

So Zheng Xinwang and others spent three days to complete a circuit printing machine that can be used with 30 centimeter wafers, with densely packed printing heads neatly arranged inside.

The mobile phone chip industry often sees 28nm, 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, etc., where xxnm refers to the width of the gate of the complementary oxide metal semiconductor field effect transistor formed on the CPU, because it is called the gate length, not what many people think chip size.

In fact, if the size of the chip is 5 nanometers, it will be the same as a hair. The graphics card chips and mobile phone chips that you often see are all millimeters in length and width.

Because there was no reasonable design, the 5-nanometer chip designed by Star Map only integrated a total of 13 billion transistors, with an average layer of between 300 and 500 million transistors.

If a properly designed 5-nanometer chip can integrate at least 30 billion transistors, the most powerful core on the market is Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. Snapdragon 845 is a 10nm process processor with up to 5.5 billion transistors.

Even with such an unreasonable design, Star Map's experimental chip can still integrate 13 billion transistors.

In addition, Galaxy Semiconductor’s silicon wafer cutting technology is also different from traditional ones.

Generally speaking, after Sanxin and Taichi complete integrated circuits on the silicon wafer, they will use wire saws or lasers to cut the chips on the silicon wafer.

Since the silicon wafer itself is very fragile, if you are not careful, the chips on the silicon wafer may be affected. In order to avoid this situation, there are considerable intervals between the chips on the silicon wafer, which leads to the utilization of the silicon wafer. area decreased further.

However, in traditional chip manufacturing, this situation is unavoidable. Otherwise, if they are too close and there is a slight error in cutting, the chip will be scrapped.

Galaxy Semiconductor's cutting process is designed based on the material handling capacity of C31, which can perform nanometer-level cutting.

Therefore, Galaxy Semiconductor's silicon wafers are covered with chips, which are densely packed and almost connected together.

As more and more original films are completed, Zhang Rujing and Wang Bosi have begun preparing for production in Galaxy Semiconductor's factory.

Semiconductor factories must use dust-free and anti-static spaces, and workers must wear purifying suits.

These are mainly to ensure that the particles, temperature and humidity in the working environment meet the standards. Any particles, temperature and humidity that do not meet the standards may affect the working performance and reliability of the manufactured devices.

In addition, radiation hazards exist in traditional semiconductor factories. The most serious one is ion implantation (physical examination once every six months, and once a year for other types of work) because of the excitation of harmful ions.

Lithography is actually the same as the place where photos are printed, and the yellow light area also has a certain amount of radiation.

Other departments are slightly slightly affected, but equipment in manufacturing plants is generally placed more densely. You may be exposed to some radiation even if you don’t work in this department. Of course, it is very slight, so purification suits also have a certain radiation protection effect. Generally speaking, work safety is still OK. Guaranteed.

Of course, these radiation hazards are relatively small for Galaxy Semiconductor, because the process that Galaxy Semiconductor will use does not include photolithography machines and ion implanters.

Wang Bosi and Zhang Rujing were busy working at the semiconductor factory. As time passed, circuit printing machines were installed in the factory one after another.

October 27, 2017, history will surely remember this moment.

Huang Haojie, Zhang Rujing, Wang Bosi and others were watching the engineers carefully debugging the production line. It was true that Galaxy Semiconductor's first chip production line had been completed.

Moreover, this production line of Galaxy Semiconductor is a universal production line. As long as the original mold on the printing head is replaced, other chips can be produced, without the need to build a new production line for a new chip.

"Mr. Huang! We are almost ready. Shall we give this production line a try?" Zhang Rujing was already impatient.

Looking at the people who were eager to try, Huang Junjie nodded.

"Okay! All departments are in place to start the trial production of chip No. 0." Zhang Rujing shouted loudly.

Engineers and workers began operating the equipment.

First, the cleaned 30 centimeter wafer is placed accurately and smoothly into the circuit printing machine for the first layer of circuits by an industrial robot.

Unlike the slow photolithography machine, the circuit printer is very fast. How fast?

The exposure time required by a photolithography machine is measured in hours, so it often takes about one to two weeks for a chip to be cut from the integrated circuit on the silicon wafer.

However, the speed of the circuit printing machine is extraordinary. It only takes five minutes to complete the engraving of the first layer of circuit grooves.

The next step is to inject conductive impurities into the first layer of circuit grooves to form switches, that is, to make transistors.

After a process, the first layer of circuit took about twenty minutes to complete the transistors of the first layer of circuit, and then continue to the process of the second layer of circuit.

Thirty-two layers of circuits plus cutting chips took a total of about 12 hours.

Since it is trial production, this production line only produces 3 silicon wafers.

Zhang Rujing looked at the cut chip, and his hands trembled involuntarily:

"Quickly, check what the yield rate is?"

"OK!"

Although everyone has been waiting here for 12 hours, it is an honor to witness the birth of the world's first 5-nanometer chip.

The size of this 5-nanometer chip is about the size of a fingernail. It is a square with a side length of 9 mm and a thickness of 200 microns.

A 30 cm3 wafer can cut 900 chips.

After carefully testing 2,700 chips, the chip quality inspector quickly handed a test report to Zhang Rujing.

"How?" Huang Haojie asked with a smile.

Zhang Rujing replied excitedly: "It's amazing. I only found two scraps, and the rest are finished products. About 70% of them are excellent products, about 28% of them are good products, and less than 2% are defective products. This is simply a miracle." Miracle."

"Haha, this is not a miracle, this is the power of technology." Huang Junjie said as he picked up a finger-sized chip.

"That's right! This is simply perfect! The era of chips belonging to Galaxy Technology has arrived." Wang Bosi clenched his fists excitedly.

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