With China's rise against the trend, the West is completely psychologically unbalanced. In order to completely curb China's strong development, Westerners are embarrassed by China everywhere and want to see Chinese jokes. It is undeniable that even in Today's China, there are still many key technologies in the field of science and technology, just as Huawei, without chips, can only rely on inventory supply. However, with the efforts of the vast number of scientists on the mainland, many card neck techniques have been conquered by Chinese alone, which has completely dumbfounded those in the United States and Europe who are full of bad stomachs.
Today, Xiaobian takes stock of the 6 card neck technologies that have been overcome.
NO.1 Lithography machine
Lithography machine is also known as, mask alignment exposure machine, exposure system, lithography system, etc. A commonly used lithography machine is mask alignment lithography.
Easy to understand, the lithography machine is an indispensable tool in the manufacture of chips, without the lithography machine there is no chip.
Chips have always been a recognized card neck problem in China, and lithography machines are key equipment that cannot be bypassed in the production of chips.
The working principle of lithography is to cover the surface of the silicon wafer with a layer of highly photosensitive photoresist, and then use light (generally ultraviolet light, deep ultraviolet light, extreme ultraviolet light) to illuminate the surface of the silicon wafer through the mask, and the photoresist irradiated by the light will react. After the completion of lithography, the silicon wafer part that is not protected by photoresist is etched, and the remaining photoresist is washed away, which realizes the construction process of the semiconductor device on the surface of the silicon wafer.
It seems that the working principle of the lithography machine is not particularly complicated, but in fact it is very difficult, requiring very strong lithography technology, and the world's strongest lithography technology is the Netherlands.
The Dutch company ASML accounts for 80% of the global high-end lithography machine market below 45nm, and currently only ASML can produce 7nm precision lithography machines in the world.
At present, the most advanced manufacturer of lithography machine equipment in China is Shanghai Microelectronics, which has realized the lithography machine of 90nm process and mass production. This year, a 28nm lithography machine has also been launched for delivery to SMIC for trial, and if it can finally be mass-produced, it can basically meet the chip manufacturing needs of half of the domestic field.
At present, China already has the technology to mass-produce 14nm precision lithography machine. But objectively speaking, 14nm and 7nm are still a long way off. Moreover, foreign countries have now achieved 3-nanometer trial production, and China is still lagging behind foreign countries by about 5 years in this field.
NO.2 Operating system
According to the research report data officially released by the world's well-known statistical agencies, in the "Third Quarter of 2020 Global Market Share Data Report", we can see that this market research data contains all the data of the current computer operating system, mobile phone operating system, and tablet operating system; the operating system with the highest global market share is Google's Android system, accounting for 41.58% of the global operating system market share, followed by Microsoft's Windows operating system. Also with a market share of 31.73%, ranking second in the world, Apple's IOS system ranks third in the world, with a market share of 16.58%, followed by MacOS, Linux and others, with market shares of 7.08%, 0.81%, and 2.95% respectively;
At present, 87% of the domestic desktop system market uses Microsoft's Windows in the United States, 8% uses Apple's OS X, and the domestic operating system has a share of less than 2%.
In terms of mobile phone operating system, Huawei launched Hongmeng OS under the sanctions of the United States, and gradually pushed it to its Huawei mobile phones. At present, the market share reaches about 6%, compatible with Android software, and even surpasses Android in some places in terms of daily use.
NO.3 Milling cutter
Machine tools are called industrial mother machines, and milling cutters are equivalent to the hands of Nuwa.
China's high-end machine tools and milling cutters are either subject to the ban on sales under the Wassenaar agreement or face unilateral increases in selling prices by sellers. The low-end field can basically meet the needs of industry, but in the field of small diameter, high precision and high-end, it is still firmly grasped by countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan, and there is still a gap in quality.
However, the good news is that in June 2021, ChinaTungsten High-tech Jinzhou Company, a subsidiary of China Minmetals, successfully broke through the 0.01mm diameter milling cutter and solved the problems of easy folding and difficult monitoring, and there were 74 newly established milling cutter-related enterprises in China last year alone. Milling cutters and machine tools are symbiotic and complementary, and will remain the main target of continental technology breakthroughs in the future.
NO.4 High-end bearing steel
Bearings, presumably familiar to people who have come into contact with machinery, support mechanical rotating bodies, reduce their coefficient of friction, and ensure their rotation accuracy. High-end bearings in high-speed rail, aircraft, and heavy-duty weapons have extremely high requirements for accuracy, performance, life and reliability, and require high-end bearing steel as raw material support, so high-end bearing steel is also known as the king of steel. However, steel for high-end bearings is almost entirely imported.
Previously, the size of foreign product inclusions was completely less than or equal to 10 microns, and the largest domestic particle size reached 50 to 52 microns, the size difference was as much as 5 times, and the core technology was monopolized by foreign countries for a long time, among which, the world's bearing giants Timken in the United States and SKF in Sweden almost monopolized the research and development, manufacturing and sales of steel for high-end bearings in the world.
However, in 2021, the strong spinning technology (PTR) developed by Professor Liu Dong's team at the School of Materials Science and Technology of Northwestern Polytechnical University broke through the card neck technology of bearing steel and has broken the monopoly of foreign technology.
At present, the annual output of domestic bearing steel is about 3.5 million tons, and China has become the largest producer of bearing steel, and the production process and equipment and product quality have ranked among the top in the world.
NO.5 Photoresist
As a core process in semiconductor manufacturing, the lithography process is critical to chip manufacturing. Photoresist is the most important consumable in the lithography process, and the quality of the photoresist is critical to the accuracy of the lithography. Therefore, photoresist is known as the crown jewel of semiconductor materials and is the most critical material in the semiconductor industry.
In addition to the semiconductor industry, photoresists can also be used in the field of PCBs and panel lights.
Japanese companies master the core technology in this field, occupying more than 70% of the global market share in 2020, the current photoresist products that China can produce are still concentrated in the low-end market, and high-end photoresists basically rely on imports.
On December 4, 2021, the ARF photoresist production line of Nanda Nortel Company began trial production, and the trial production situation was stable, and the inertia of domestic photoresist to buy high-end was increasing.
NO.6 Scanning electron microscopy
Scanning electron microscopy is an instrument that observes the microstructure of materials, and the mainland needs to spend more than $100 million a year to purchase hundreds of scanning electron microscopes, mainly produced in the United States, Japan, Germany and the Czech Republic.
The share of domestic scanning electron microscopy is very small, about 5%, mainly because domestic scanning electron microscopy is not as good as imported electron microscope in terms of imaging performance. Scanning electron microscopy needs to converge very fine electron beam spots, and the domestic electron optical system technology is not enough to support it.
At present, the domestic scientific instrument enterprises represented by the Zhongke Instrument are catching up, in November 2021, the sales of The scientific instrument scanning electron microscopy products reached a new high, and the sales volume of scanning electron microscope reached 12 units in a single month, and the development of domestic scanning electron microscopy is rising steadily.