In the chip track, lithography machines are an unspeakable pain point on the mainland. The mainland is not without attempts to develop its own lithography machine, and the good news about domestic lithography machines has also been coming out in the past two years. No, on February 7, Shanghai Microelectronics delivered a 2.5D/3D advanced encapsulated lithography machine, which is a breakthrough in the field of lithography machines in the mainland.
However, the encapsulated lithography machine belongs to the posterior lithography machine, which is not used to manufacture chips, and can only encapsulate chips. The front road lithography machine for chip manufacturing has a very high technical barrier, which is quite tricky for the existing manufacturing level of the mainland, and the domestic 28nm lithography machine has not yet been accurately informed.
The EUV lithography machine with a process of less than 7nm has more than 100,000 light parts, and it is even more difficult to build it, and only the Dutch ASML company can produce it in the world.
Since the release of the first EUV lithography machine, ASML has delivered a total of 132 EUV lithography machines, of course, none of which were sold to the mainland. SMIC paid a $120 million deposit for the EUV lithography machine in 2018, but because of the BLOCKADE by the United States, ASML has not been able to deliver until now. Because of this, the mainland's chip manufacturing is still at the middle and low-end level.
SMIC, a semiconductor company that represents the highest-end production level of domestic chips, can only mass-produce 14nm chips today. TSMC is already mass-producing 5nm chips, and also said that it will achieve mass production of 3nm chips in the second half of this year.
SMIC's Liang Mengsong also said: The development of 5nm chips has been carried out, and the most difficult parts of the technology are also being overcome, and once the EUV lithography machine arrives, it can be developed in an all-round way. Therefore, the key point is still in the EUV lithography machine, without it, even SMIC is difficult to have a breakthrough.
Isn't there a process that can skip the EUV lithography machine and make chips of 7nm and below? In fact, there is, this process is the "optical quantum chip".
The manufacture of traditional chips is mostly processed by micro and nano technologies, and the higher the accuracy, the higher the requirements for tools and technologies. When it comes to chips up to 7nm and below, only the EUV lithography machine can complete it. Although the manufacture of optical quantum chips also requires the use of lithography machines, but the requirements of optical quantum chips for micro and nano technology are not high, you can use DUV lithography machines.
In 2008, the UK launched the first integrated optical quantum chip (referred to as the "optical quantum chip"), which caused a sensation as soon as it came out. Because its information transmission carrier is light, it crushes the traditional chip in terms of control accuracy, storage time, and running ability.
Although the performance of optical quantum chips is far superior to that of traditional chips, foreign leaders such as Google are not optimistic about optical quantum chips, because light is easily consumed, and quantum technology is also very difficult. However, the mainland attaches great importance to optical quantum chips, and the "national team" Chinese Academy of Sciences has taken the lead in researching optical quantum chips.
For more than ten years, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have made repeated breakthroughs in the field of optical quantum chips, and Academician Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China has clearly stated that the University of Science and Technology of China has overcome two optical quantum chip technologies and led the global track.
In 2018, the scientific research team of Shanghai Jiaotong University led by Jin Xianmin, a student of Academician Pan Jianwei, successfully prepared an integrated optical quantum chip with 49 × 49 nodes through the high-end technology of "femtosecond laser direct writing".
In the second half of last year, the University of Science and Technology of China prepared a "harpoon"-shaped topological beam splitter structure by optimizing the performance of quantum information processing efficiency, and the National University of Defense Technology also prepared a programmable optical quantum chip. Under the leadership of the University of Science and Technology of China, as well as the joint efforts of relevant scientific research teams, university technical teams and scientific and technological enterprises, China has achieved a qualitative breakthrough in the field of optical quantum chips.
Recently, the quantum simulation research of the University of Science and Technology of China has made another major breakthrough - Pan Jianwei, Yao Xingcan, Chen Yu'ao's team based on the ultra-cold lithium-dysprosium atom quantum simulation platform, measured the attenuation rate of the second sound (acoustic diffusion coefficient) for the first time, and accurately determined the thermal conductivity and viscosity coefficient of the system. This has once again increased the technical basis for the development of optical quantum chips in the mainland.
At present, Turing Quantum, founded by Jin Xianmin, has become the leading enterprise in the field of optical quantum chips in China, and this company completed hundreds of millions of yuan of financing in November last year, and Legend Capital, SMIC Juyuan, Amber Capital, etc. have followed suit, and the core goal is the research and development of programmable optical quantum chips and tape-outs, as well as the commercialization of quantum algorithms.
Over the years, the university of science and technology in the field of quantum exploration has not stopped, and the optical quantum chip has successfully completed the risk trial production, I believe that once the realization of micro-nano and optical quantum chips mass production, the mainland can break the shackles of the EUV lithography machine blockade.
Although semiconductors are high-tech fields, they are also constantly evolving and innovating like other fields. The card neck device of the lithography machine is not impossible to bypass, and now that the optical quantum chip technology has gradually developed, it is only a matter of time before the existing chip manufacturing technology is broken.
Perhaps as the CEO of ASML said, China is indeed unable to independently manufacture top lithography machines at present, but it does not mean that China cannot break through this bottleneck, because China will always try to overcome it.