It is common that the most basic material for chip manufacturing is sand. Its main component is silicon dioxide. The reduction reaction at extremely high temperature extracts high-purity silicon crystals from oxides, then makes silicon ingots, and then cuts the silicon ingots into circular discs as thin as cicadas, which are called silicon wafers.
First, the silicon wafer should be photoetched, then coated with a special adhesive, and then the designed chip drawings with billions of circuit components should be made into masks. The so-called mask is a special projection imaging negative, including the drawings at the beginning of chip design, which will be printed on the silicon wafer below. The more powerful the chip, the more electronic components need to be placed on the smaller chip, which also requires higher projection resolution. It's like using a smaller pen to complete this task in order to draw a more accurate picture. The shorter the wavelength of the projection light source, the higher the fineness of the projected picture, which requires the shorter the wavelength of the light source in mask aligner. From ultraviolet to deep ultraviolet to extreme ultraviolet, only the most advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography machine can produce 7 nm and 5 nm chips.
Using extreme ultraviolet light to project the design of the chip onto the photoresist mold of the silicon wafer, a photochemical reaction will occur at this time. Where the light is irradiated, it will be easily dissolved in water, and then it will be developed and cleaned to form a photoetching circuit texture, etched with a special chemical solution to obtain various criss-crossing circuit grooves, and then the corresponding impurity particles will be injected into it and diffused at high temperature until the conductivity meets the design requirements, and then the previous series of processes will be repeated dozens of times.
The whole process of chip manufacturing needs a lot of fine optical technology, material technology and precision machining technology, any of which is indispensable. High precision mask aligner is the most important thing in the whole chip production process. At present, the most advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography machine in the world is made by ASML Company in the Netherlands. Pulsed laser emitted by ultra-high power laser can produce ultraviolet rays with extreme wavelength. When the pulsed laser hits tiny liquid tin, it can be instantly turned into high-temperature plasma, which can excite the extreme ultraviolet needed by mask aligner, and then it is sent to the projection lens in the mask aligner through a series of mirrors to photoetch the silicon wafer.
Mask aligner, weighing 200 tons, is one of the most sophisticated machines in the world at present, and the price of a single machine is as high as $65.438 +0.5 billion. A domestic company once ordered an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine from ASML Company in the Netherlands, but it has not been delivered successfully so far, including patented technology that needs American authorization, and the laser light source system in mask aligner is one of them.
Chip manufacturing is a capital-intensive and technology-intensive industry with a long research and development cycle. We still need to explore on this road, but we will succeed one day. Ren Zhengfei, president of Huawei, once said: "Our chips will take at least 50 years to catch up with Apple." Facing the rapid development of science and technology and technology blockade, we are fearless and forge ahead!