After nearly seven years of painstaking research, the "super-resolution lithography equipment development" project passed acceptance. This means that China now has the "world's first ultraviolet super-resolution lithography equipment with the highest resolution".
In other words, Chinese scientists have developed a very powerful lithography machine.
Photolithography, that is the core equipment for chip manufacturing. China has always been in the chip industry is restricted by others, in the field of photolithography is even more so, often encountered foreign neck pinch, sales ban and other constraints.
For this breakthrough, the acceptance of the expert group's opinion is:
The lithography in the 365-nanometer light source wavelength, the highest single exposure line width resolution of 22 nanometers.
The project breaks through the limit of resolving power diffraction in principle, and establishes a new route for the research and development of high-resolution, large-area nanolithography equipment, bypassing relevant foreign intellectual property barriers.
When the news came out, many people have praised it, but most of them are unknown, of course, some people say it is bragging. What exactly does this news mean behind the scenes?
There are many highlights of this breakthrough, among which the most noteworthy are several points, which are briefly summarized by Quantum Bits as follows:
Light source: a thick knife engraves a thin line
This domestically produced lithography machine, which uses a
365-nanometer-wavelength
light source, belongs to the range of the near-ultraviolet.
Often, in pursuit of smaller nanometer processes, the solution for lithography vendors is to use light sources with shorter and shorter wavelengths.
That's the thinking at ASML.
The light source for the most widely used lithography machine abroad now is a
193-nanometer-wavelength deep-ultraviolet laser
which has a lithographic resolution of only 38 nanometers, or about 0.27 times the wavelength of the exposure.
This domestic photolithography machine, which can do 22 nanometers. And, "when combined with double-exposure technology, it can also be used to make 10-nanometer-level chips in the future."
That is to say, this photolithography machine developed by the Institute of Optoelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOPC) realizes a higher photolithographic resolution with a longer wavelength and lower cost light source.
Hu Song, deputy chief designer of the project and a researcher at the Institute of Photovoltaic Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IPT), in an interview with China Science Daily, drew an analogy, "It's equivalent to us using a very thick knife to carve a very fine line."
This is known as
breaking the diffraction limit of resolving power
. As a result, it is also known as the world's first ultraviolet super-resolution lithography equipment with the highest resolving power.
Cost: high-end equipment "cabbage price"
The shorter the wavelength, the higher the cost.
In order to obtain a higher resolution, traditionally used to shorten the light wave, increase the numerical aperture of the imaging system and other technological paths to improve the lithography, but the problem is that not only is the technical difficulty extremely high,
Equipment cost is also extremely high
ASML's latest fifth-generation lithography using shorter wavelengths of the 13.5-nanometer extreme ultraviolet light, for the realization of the 14-nanometer, 10-nanometer and 7-nanometer process chip production. nanometer processes.
One such lithography machine costs more than $100 million.
But the CAS Institute of Optoelectronics equipment, which uses longer wavelengths of more common ultraviolet light, means that the domestically produced lithography machine uses
a low-cost light source
to achieve higher-resolution lithography.
Some netizens have commented that the Chinese-made lithography machine may become a cabbage later, like other high-tech equipment conquered by China.
Breakthrough: Breaking the embargo and bending the road to overtake
The appearance of this photolithography machine has another important significance.
Here we quote from the CCTV report: the successful implementation of the super-resolution lithography equipment project, breaking the foreign monopoly in the field of high-end lithography equipment, nano-optical processing provides a new solution.
Also for the new generation of information technology, new materials, biomedical and other advanced strategic technology areas, the basic frontier and national defense security provides the core technology guarantee.
The deputy chief designer of the project, Hu Song, a researcher at the Institute of Optoelectronic Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "The first first is that our current level and the international level has been able to reach a consistent level.
The resolution index is actually an index belonging to the foreign embargo, after our project came out
to break the embargo has a great help
."
"The second one is that we don't have to be afraid if there is a foreign embargo, because this technology of ours goes further, and we think it can be guaranteed.
In the future development of the chip, the next generation of opto-mechanical integrated chip or what we call the broad chip, it is possible to bend the road to overtake the car in front of more."
Limitations
Of course, we can't be hot-headed.
The appearance of this device does not mean that China's chip manufacturing will immediately soar.
On the one hand, chip manufacturing is a huge industrial ecosystem, and on the other hand, the photolithography machine of the Institute of Optoelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences still has certain limitations.
It is reported that this equipment has prepared a series of nano-functional devices, including large-diameter thin film mirrors, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, Cherenkov radiation devices, biochemical sensing chips and so on.
Verified the equipment nano-functional device processing capabilities, has reached the level of practical.
That is to say, at present, mainly some devices in the field of optics and so on.
However, there are also Zhihu users said that "with the current technical capabilities, can only do the cycle of lines and dots, is unable to produce complex IC need graphics.