Chapter 1154
Electromagnetic Unsheathing! Paralyzing the Bear Fleet
With it, we can carve out a control chip powerful enough to support the needs of the Candle Dragon! We can then firmly grasp the throat of our chip's autonomy with our own fingers!
"I demand it!"
Su Dingping's voice suddenly rose, carrying an unquestionable determination.
"Immediately! Summon the nation's top chemists! Organic synthesis titans! Materials interface physics authorities! Polymer rheology experts! Gather all the top experts you can find at Longxin Laboratory! Form a command center codenamed 'Etching Shadow' for the in-house development of photoresist!"
"Lord Liu!"
"exist!"
Liu Huaming responded immediately.
"With the highest priority authority of the Energy Department, please coordinate resources to meet my above requirements! Time! We need time now! More importantly, we need the academic brains of the entire Longxia tribe!"
"it is good!
Within an hour, the transfer order will be sent to the nation's top research institutions!
Liu Huaming was resolute.
The war machine that had been dormant for a moment, Dragon Heart Laboratory, roared and started up again at a speed far exceeding its limits!
A battle called "Shadow Eclipse" has begun! The chemistry lab and materials lab have been urgently emptied and reconfigured!
Just as the Longxin Laboratory was in turmoil from an unprecedented battle against photoresist, with the air filled day and night with the pungent and complex smells of various organic solvents and chemical compounds, Qin Mingzhu, weary from her journey, arrived once again as promised.
This time, she brought not raw materials, but finished products delivered directly!
In a heavily guarded handover room at the Longxin base.
Whoosh—!
Several specially made anti-static temperature-controlled incubators were carefully placed on the ultra-clean laboratory bench and opened by Qin Mingzhu's bodyguards. Inside, rows of sealed plastic trays were neatly stacked! In the trays, chips the size of a fingernail, encapsulated with silver-white metal pins, shimmered faintly under the shadowless lamp.
Qin Mingzhu pointed to the chips with her finger.
"I know that the 250nm process is not top-of-the-line, but it is mature enough. They are all standard industrial components that have flowed out of the production lines of major Western electronics factories, including CPUs, I/O controllers, AD converters, etc. The performance is stable and can definitely withstand high temperature and high humidity! Although they are second-hand products that have been phased out and withdrawn from the market."
She paused.
"But they are all over 90% new, from consecutive batches, and their performance is absolutely reliable! I guarantee it with my reputation; each one has been repeatedly tested and screened by my professional engineers!"
She looked intently at Su Dingping.
"Chief Engineer Su, I wouldn't say these things are top-of-the-line, but they're more than enough to lay the foundation for the core control units of your Zhulong Power Station, ensuring they can start working and light up on time!"
Su Dingping picked up a chip and examined it carefully, feeling the cold, solid texture of the casing with his fingertips, and checking the engraved serial number on it to confirm that it was correct.
Looking at the nearly one thousand chips in the box, which were a timely help, an indescribable feeling welled up in his heart.
Qin Mingzhu was risking her life to create a safety net for him by establishing her own underground trade network and taking on enormous risks! She was building a way out even in the worst-case scenario for that "one-year deadline" hanging over his head!
"Miss Qin!"
Su Dingping raised his head, his eyes filled with deep emotion and gratitude.
"This time... it's just in time!"
Su Dingping will never forget this favor!
Qin Mingzhu waved her hand dismissively.
"Forget about favors! I'm just investing! Investing in you as a person, and in the glimmer of hope brought by your Dragon Star Dragon Core!"
She smiled.
"Besides, I'm looking forward to relying on Longxia's coattails so I can enjoy the shade under their big tree in the future!"
Watching Qin Mingzhu leave in a huff, Su Dingping carefully closed the incubators filled with "lifeline" chips.
With this batch of hard currency as a safety net.
The "Candle Dragon" project will not be strangled by the chip bottleneck! The life-or-death burden on their shoulders, which concerns whether the power station can be lit, seems to have been mostly lifted off their shoulders in an instant!
An unprecedented sense of ease mixed with intense fighting spirit instantly filled Su Dingping's heart!
He seemed to have broken free of the last invisible shackle! Photoresist!
That is the front line where he must fight with all his might right now!
...
Su Dingping took a deep breath and sank into the "forging space" deep in his mind.
The enormous golden icon representing "high-performance ArF immersion photoresist" floated silently. Below the icon, the gray energy progress bar clearly displayed the remaining unlock time.
Forty-two days!
Su Dingping took a deep breath, his mind relentlessly and forcefully piercing into the incredibly complex information flow of photoresist technology! Instantly, an even more surging torrent of information and data washed over his consciousness!
Polymer chain structure design, quantum efficiency synergistic mechanism of photoinitiators, balance point between resolution and development stability of resin systems, immersion flow field and liquid interface anti-dissolution layer construction technology... Countless unprecedented and exquisite knowledge structures unfold like a dazzling galaxy!
Every profound insight, every collision and fusion of external experimental feedback and illustrated theory... the time on the progress bar is quietly ticking away, decreasing by one minute!
...
"Etching Shadow" Command Center – The newly established Photoresist Ultra-Clean Joint Laboratory.
The atmosphere here can only be described as crazy!
Several technical experts, dressed in specially made multi-layered white chemical protective suits, wearing pig-snout masks and wide-view protective goggles, stood like statues in front of the huge synthesis reactor, staring intently through the thick isolation windows at the reaction process of the turbulent blue-purple liquid inside.
The air filtration system emitted a low, rumbling noise, mixed with the pungent smell of various synthetic organic compounds.
Professor Chen Xuesen, a leading figure in the field of organic chemistry with gray hair and the Chinese Academy of Sciences logo pinned to his chest, was frantically taking notes on a large screen next to him, which was filled with complex chromatographic analysis curves, along with several assistants.
His bloodshot eyes were fixed on one of the constantly changing peaks of the curve, and he yelled into the communicator in a distorted voice.
"No! No! The purity is still too low! The residual concentrations of those sodium and potassium ions are too high! Add chelating agent S-7 immediately! Perform micro-titration!"
"Try reducing the dosage by one milliliter at a time! Quickly!"
On the control panel, several young people's fingers flew across the precision electronic injection control instrument.
The entire area was filled with a suffocating sense of racing against time!
The other area is entirely the realm of physics.
A precision photolithography simulator, consisting of a large laser emitter, a complex vacuum chamber, and an ultra-high-speed camera, is humming softly!
A high-purity 193nm ArF laser beam is focused by a lens system and precisely strikes a silicon wafer coated with different candidate photoresist films, just like a divine carving knife!
The physical interface scientist responsible for monitoring the ultra-high magnification microscopic camera stared intently at the screen, capturing the instantaneous changes in the breaking of colloidal molecular bonds and the morphology of the graphic edges under the action of laser energy.
"Report! The photosensitivity decay of the A-18 mixed resin system has been delayed by 3 nanoseconds!"
"Report! Initiator system P-09 exhibits 0.05-micron edge swelling below the submerged liquid contact surface!"
"Record the data! Reallocate resources!"
Yuan Tao's hoarse voice roared through the communication loop. He also put on a full set of protective clothing and personally guarded this physical verification end.
This is a battle of hellish difficulty! Photoresist is hailed as the "invisible jewel" in the crown of the semiconductor industry, and its formula is no less precise and complex than chip design itself!
The molecular weight range and branched structure of each basic resin need to be balanced with extreme precision; the activity and initiation wavelength efficiency of the photoinitiator can vary greatly even with slight differences; and the synergistic effect of various additives is like dancing on a knife's edge!
Su Dingping's core immersion technology concept, in addition to this precise formula, introduces the enormous technical challenges brought about by water or liquid fluid as a higher refractive index medium lens—flow field disturbance, immersion erosion, and fluctuations in photosensitive reaction efficiency...
Every tiny change in the data means a painstaking adjustment of the formula and a long wait.
Time was passing by frantically, measured in hours! Various new photoresist samples synthesized in different proportions filled a specially made sample counter in a nearby low-temperature, constant-temperature room!
Preliminary screening, physical imaging verification... Failure! Failure! Failure! The lab reports, falling like snowflakes, were covered with glaring red "X" marks!
The dark clouds of despair seem to be gathering and condensing silently in my heart again!
Su Dingping became the central figure and soul of the entire laboratory.
He was like a tireless iron man, shuttling at high speed between the core laboratories inside the "Shadow Eclipse" command center!
He no longer simply gave orders; he personally rushed to the experimental table!
Beside the synthesis reactor, he stared intently at the special flocculation state of the viscous liquid under the laser scattering instrument, his eyes seemingly entering a strange, ethereal state, as if resonating with the data flowing in space;
In the chemical spectrum analysis room, he looked at a series of complex mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectra, his fingers tapping in the air like playing the piano, while the theoretical model of the spectrum transmission was rapidly deduced in his mind.
Standing before the physical development simulator, he watched as beams of laser light blasted down, revealing the minuscule signs of dissolution and collapse at the edge of the colloid. In an instant, the solutions for optimizing the energy matching between nanoscale hydrophobic coatings and polymer interfaces flashed before his eyes…
Every setback he faced was like a fragment breaking through the barrier of his encyclopedia! The timeline on the progress bar flashed and jumped wildly! Remaining unlock time—twelve days! Eight days! Five days!
Two days!
at last!
After an exhausting 92-hour marathon experiment!
As Su Dingping's eyes grew even more bloodshot, and his entire body reeked of chemical reagents, he stared intently at the last piece of specially formulated coated silicon wafer, precisely etched with 193nm laser immersion, slowly rising from the developing tank...
A miracle happened!
The silicon wafer, after being rinsed with ultra-high temperature water, exhibited a level of pattern clarity, edge steepness, and resistance to etching penetration that far exceeded everyone's understanding of the limits of ArF lithography! Its resolution even approached the 7nm level, something they had never dared to imagine before!
This achieves a level of process precision that only EUV technology nodes can barely match!
The laboratory was deathly silent! Everyone was stunned by the ultra-fine, near-perfect array of nanoscale lines revealed under the microscope!
"It's done! It's done!!!"
A young technician finally uttered a muttered monologue, lunged forward, snatched the microscope eyepiece, examined it closely for a few seconds, and then suddenly let out a howl, a frenzied roar like that of a hungry wolf!
"It's done! Chief Engineer Su! Professor Yuan! Look!"
These lines!
This resolution! Not 250nm! It's 7nm! Immersive! Our immersive technology... it... it directly elevates the resolution to the 7nm level!
Whoosh—!
The entire "Shadow Eclipse" command center was instantly overwhelmed by a deafening roar of jubilation!
……
The biting sea breeze carried the smell of gunpowder, and the air was taut like a taut bowstring. The combined fleet of the eagle and the bear cleaved through the waves in the high seas, their naval guns firing, the massive battle group exuding naked deterrence.
The roar of the exercise, transmitted through the cold radio waves, struck the huge LCD screen in the Longxia Command Center, and resonated deeply in the hearts of every decision-maker.
"Too deceiving!"
An elderly man, carrying the stars of a general on his shoulder, slammed his fist on the table and stood up, his white eyebrows bristling.
"An exercise? An exercise with guns loaded and blocking our doorstep, this is a coup!"
"They're forcing our Zhulong."
In the center of the main seat, an elderly man with a calm face but sharp eyes like a hawk slowly spoke. His voice was not loud, but it suppressed all the restlessness in the conference room.
"They want to use military pressure to break our upright spine. Chips, photoresist, nuclear fusion... every step is a ticking time bomb for them. Retreat? One step back means utter destruction. There is only one option: war! But not a hot war, but a hard-fought battle of technology and will!"
The moment the order was given, the entire war machine operated more efficiently and silently than the largest supercomputer array in the Longxia tribe.
The lights on the "Kunlun Taiyu" silicon wafer production line go out all night, and the surface of the wafers is filled with a cold, moon-like glow; in the laboratory of the "Etching Shadow" project group, which is buried deep underground, the researchers' eyes are bloodshot, and they are staring intently at every imperceptible jump of the photoresist formula parameters, like hawks being trained.
Nationwide, all the old equipment that was once used in chip production lines at the 250nm level and above was reactivated. Workers worked in shifts like crazy, continuously forging the "second-hand heart" sent by the Qin clan chief Mingzhu into a lifeline to maintain the pulse of "Zhulong"—ensuring that the control core could beat no matter what for a year!
first step.
Dragon scales unsheathed! Electromagnetic Fang!
While the fleets of the eagle and the bear were showing off their power in the sea area considered the lifeblood of Longxia, deep within the Longxia naval base, a torrent of steel was undergoing a phoenix-like rebirth!
Inside the integrated, enclosed military factory, scorching sparks from cutting were accompanied by the deafening sound of heavy hammers striking the ground.
Several colossal ships, like steel behemoths stripped of their ancient fangs, lay motionless on their steel supports. Engineers and technicians, like worker ants clinging to the monsters' bodies, busily cut, welded, and embedded unprecedented new weaponry.
Su Dingping, the young core member who shuttles back and forth between the chip industry and the electromagnetic railgun project like a firefighter, is currently standing at the site of the main gun emplacement modification of a massive destroyer. (End of Chapter)