Rewrite the Technological Landscape

At the beginning of September, Meng Qian went to Neon Country again, signed a secret document with Sony, and reached a tactical alliance agreement. The two companies will work together to make Samsung the first. Focus on Samsung, and then Sony will compete with Dafeng Group.

Although it is actually very difficult for Samsung to collapse at this time, after all, it is supported by Korea, but it is also good to use various methods to suppress the development of Samsung, because what Meng Qian cares most about is not how powerful Samsung is, but how strong Samsung is. In the future, when he confronts the United States in an all-round way, Samsung is likely to stab China like he stabbed Neon Country.

In this life, at least, Samsung must not have too much influence in China.

This time when he came to Neon Country, apart from discussing the tactical cooperation with Sony, Meng Qian had another very important thing to do, which was related to the lithography machine.

It has been a while since Intel led the research on large-scale EUV lithography machines in the United States, and some news has come out from time to time to make people think that the next generation of lithography machines is from the United States.

However, Meng Qian really needs to pay more attention to the development of the next-generation lithography machine. Recently, Shanghai Microelectronics has sent a lot of bad news to Meng Qian, and many technologies are uncertain.

Therefore, Meng Qian needs to speed up the development of some things.

Here I have to mention a little about the history of EUV. Meng Qian read an article before and said: EUV lithography technology was identified as the preferred technology for next-generation lithography by the International Semiconductor Technology Development Roadmap in 1999, which means, Whoever does not participate in the research and development of EUV lithography technology will automatically abstain from the next-generation chip competition.

In order to confirm this matter, Meng Qian managed to find the original text of the 1999 International Semiconductor Technology Development Roadmap, which did not contain this sentence at all, nor even similar words.

On the contrary, according to the records at the time, there were four conjectures about the next-generation lithography technology in 1999, namely 157nm F2 laser, electron beam projection (EPL), ion projection (IPL), EUV and X-ray, because EUV It belongs to soft X-ray, so it is counted in the same field as X-ray research.

At that time, there were indeed more than 200 companies and institutions researching EUV in the world, but more than 300 companies and institutions researched 157nm F2 lasers.

Moreover, most enterprises and institutions conduct research and development in multiple directions, especially IBM, which develops in four directions together.

At that time, SVG and Nikon were the best at 157nm F2 lasers. At that time, the best EUV and the largest investment company was Intel. This is why Intel recently jumped out and shouted that EUV should be used to create the next generation of lithography. machine.

In this era, the alliance led by Intel is the first echelon of EUV, and where is the second echelon? In terms of investment, the second echelon seems to be Europe, but in terms of results, the second echelon must be the neon country. Because Neon Nation started to study EUV very early, but there was a slight fault in the middle. In the few years of the fault, Neon Nation focused on X-ray research and development, but the foundation is still there, and it developed very quickly after picking it up later. Hong's deepest research on EUV is also Nikon.

So Nikon laughed at himself in later generations that he had mastered the key EUV technology 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the foundation at that time was not enough to support the development of EUV lithography machines.

This is actually true. ASML has been working on EUV lithography machines for ten years without competitors. Nikon has been working on EUV lithography machines in this era.

This is why Meng Qian must kill Nikon, Meng Qian wants the company Nikon!

Therefore, after reaching a tactical alliance with Sony, Meng Qian immediately raised a demand, that is, further cooperation in the field of cameras. Everyone knows that Nikon wants to turn around with cameras recently, and Nikon has indeed survived the past few years with cameras.

Therefore, Meng Qian must not give Nikon a chance, and called on Sony and Canon to further deepen the cooperative research and development of cameras. For this reason, Meng Qian took the initiative to bear a large amount of research and development costs. He first spent 1 billion soft sister coins, and Sony and Canon combined It also followed 500 million, but the research and development results are shared by everyone.

In fact, Dafeng Group itself relies on the decentralization of military technology and is rapidly improving its level in the fields of craftsmanship and lenses. This time, it wants to pull Sony and Canon in this way because it wants to suppress Nikon to the greatest extent.

In addition, in addition to suppressing Nikon, it is obviously difficult for Dafeng Group to fight against the alliance initiated by Intel, so Meng Qian also needs an alliance.

This time when he came to Neon Country, Meng Qian brought some research materials about EUV lithography machines and came to pull the alliance.

As for the target, it is naturally the leading company in the EUV field of Nihongguo, including Mitsubishi, Nihongguo Electric Co., Ltd., Nihongguo Telegraph and Telephone Company, Toshiba, etc., and as the world's three largest manufacturers of immersion lithography machines Canon, although not that powerful in the EUV field, must have entered the game, and it is the most active one, helping Meng Qian to "fool" his own company.

After all, Canon has managed to rank among the first echelon of global lithography machines, and I don’t want to be squeezed out.

And in order not to be squeezed out, now Canon can only unite with the Dafeng Group. If it splits with the Dafeng Group at this time, it will wait to be killed by the United States.

With the information brought by the Dafeng Group and Canon’s desperate matchmaking, Meng Qian finally successfully established the Huani EUV R\u0026D Alliance. In addition to the dozens of companies and institutions on the side of the Neon Country, there is also the Dafeng Group on the Huaxia side. Shanghai Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Chang Guang Institute, 45 Institute and more than ten enterprises and institutions.

As soon as the news came out, Nikon was the first one who couldn't sit still, and immediately ran to the Neon Semiconductor Association to complain, and you didn't bring me Nikon when you were engaged in EUV? Are you out of your mind?

However, no one cares about Nikon at all. This alliance is led by Dafeng Group and Canon, so why don’t you want to take you.

When the news of the alliance came out, the United States naturally responded. Intel has no way to stop the cooperation between the two countries now, but Intel jumped out in a high-profile way to say that they have made a huge breakthrough in the EUV field. A paper that can be made public, there are three major problems in the EUV lithography machine, and the biggest problem is the light source.

It is very, very difficult to write about the research on light sources. Although it is true, when EUV penetrates objects, the scattering and absorption are very strong, which makes the lithography machine need a very, very strong light source. This difficulty is huge. Even the air can absorb EUV, so the inside of the machine has to be made a vacuum.

And because the lithography precision is a few nanometers, EUV has extremely high requirements on the concentration of light, which is equivalent to taking a flashlight to shine on the moon's spot of no more than one coin. Reflection requires that the mirror be 30cm long and the undulation less than 0.3nm, which is equivalent to the undulation of a railroad track from Yanjing to Shanghai, which does not exceed 1mm.

Intel's public papers are to let the world understand how difficult EUV lithography machines are, and then say that Intel has made a major breakthrough. As for the breakthrough, it is vague and explained in a confidential sentence.

Watching the news, Meng Qian suddenly became inexplicably excited, "Let's see who will make the EUV lithography machine first."

Thanks to Anla Keabahu for the reward!