For a long time, the photoresist used to produce chips in China has been monopolized by foreign companies. After the self-research of photoresist, another achievement was broken by domestic researchers, that is, optical quantum chips. Compared with traditional chips, where is its magic?
As we all know, the material needed to develop chips is photoresist. At present, the global high-end photoresist products have been monopolized by Japanese companies, and 90% of the photoresist used in China needs to be imported. Facing the pressure of monopoly, domestic photoresist enterprises began their own research and development plans.
Recently, Nanda Optoelectronics, a domestic enterprise, said that it has built a production line that can produce 25 tons of photoresist, most of which are provided by domestic enterprises, and there is no risk of being suppressed by monopoly.
Jing Rui, another photoresist company, promised to invest 400 million yuan in scientific research by 2025. The total investment in 2020 is 33.84 million yuan. By the end of the year, Jing Rui had 72 patent projects.
In addition to the rapid development of the photoresist industry, there is also good news in the semiconductor field. The Chinese University of Science and Technology has realized quantum interference in the insulator chip, which is of great significance to the research and development of optical quantum chips.
You know, this is the first time in human history to realize the interference of optical quantum information. Once the news came out, it immediately caused a sensation at home and abroad. American researchers believe that optical quantum chips will be the main materials to replace silicon-based chips in the future.
The optical quantum chip developed in China is based on the silicon-based chip, which integrates the knowledge of optics and quantum computing, so that the chip has higher accuracy, better use stability and stronger information retention ability, and can be used normally in harsh environments.
Most importantly, the production and research of this kind of chip do not need the participation of high-end mask aligner at all. As we all know, the domestic chip technology level has been bound by high-end mask aligner, and it is too late to make a breakthrough.
Due to the shortage of cutting-edge mask aligner, domestic dependence on traditional chips has reached a very severe level. For example, in the first quarter of this year, domestic chip purchases reached 654.38+05.5 billion, and the purchase amount was 93.6 billion US dollars, equivalent to 602.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.9%.
This amazing data has once again pushed the topic of chip localization to the forefront, and it is urgent to realize chip material substitution and independent research and development.
We should know that most of the chips produced in various countries are silicon-based chips. One of the characteristics of this kind of chips is that the higher the technology level, the better the performance, but it is also closer to the physical limit, which means it is more difficult to achieve.
Therefore, when the silicon-based chip develops to the level of 5nm process, it is difficult to make a higher breakthrough. Therefore, although TSMC and Samsung are competing for the research and development technology of 3nm process, other R&D teams have chosen another chip research and development method. Optical quantum chips will inevitably become the main direction of semiconductors in the future because they don't need mask aligner's participation.
But at present, although the technology of top chips is infinitely close to the physical limit, it is difficult to make a higher breakthrough, but the fields such as automobiles and home appliances still rely on mature technology chips, so silicon-based chips still need to expand their production capacity.
Now many domestic enterprises have started capacity expansion plans. Recently, China Resources Micro has indicated that it plans to invest 7.55 billion yuan to build a wafer production chain, and it is expected to produce 30,000 chips per month after the official operation.
Another giant, SMIC, continues to exert its strength. Production capacity will continue to expand in 2020. This year, the monthly production capacity of 12 inch wafers will be doubled. With the expansion of production capacity, the revenue in the first half of the year is bound to hit a new high, which is expected to be around158 billion yuan.
At present, the development trend of domestic chips is that Qi Xin will work together to expand the production capacity of mature chips, try its best to develop high-end chip technology, and at the same time, do not forget to change lanes and overtake, and develop chips with the latest materials. I hope that under the development of these three aspects, domestic chips can have different achievements.