Chapter 849: As Bright as a Diamond

The carbon-based chip is done!

This is probably the best news Lu Zhou has heard in the past few days.

After being surprised for a while, without any hesitation, he asked Yang Xu to take him to the Institute of Computing Materials, and found the laboratory where the carbon-based chip project team was located.

When the two arrived at the laboratory, it was quite quiet in the laboratory.

A group of researchers with dangerous hairlines are surrounding an experimental device about two people tall, and one of the researchers is carefully adjusting something.

Instead of going up to disturb them, Lu Zhou pulled Yang Xu and waited at the door for a while.

Soon, exclamations gradually spread from the crowd.

Looking at the excited expressions on the faces of those researchers, Lu Zhou could guess without asking, that they should have discovered something extraordinary.

Waiting a little anxiously, Yang Xu looked at Lu Zhou and said.

"Let's go there."

Lu Zhou nodded.

"Um."

They bypassed a lot of experimental equipment and walked into the laboratory. When the two were about to approach the experimental equipment, the group of researchers finally found Lu Zhou and Yang Xu.

Standing in the crowd, a middle-aged man who looked very academic, with a surprised expression on his face, hurried forward and said.

"Director Yang? Dean Lu?"

"This is the person in charge of the project." Knowing that this was the first time Lu Zhou had met this person, Yang Xu skillfully introduced him, "Professor Wu Tianqun."

"Hello, Professor Wu."

"Hello, hello," flattered to hold Lu Zhou's right hand, Professor Wu enthusiastically shook it, "Academician Lu, why are you here in person?"

"I heard that the experiment has a result, so Yang Xu pulled me over." He let go of his hand and looked at the device in the crowd. Lu Zhou smiled and asked, "Has it been completed?"

Keep your back straight, Professor Wu said with a flushed face.

"This is a repeat experiment, the first experiment was successful yesterday!"

Lu Zhou immediately said: "Can you show me?"

Professor Wu immediately made a gesture of invitation.

"Please follow me!"

Producing a chip is a very complicated matter. Using a silicon wafer as a substrate, layer upon layer of photomasks are stacked up like a pile of Lego toys, and finally a complete chip can be obtained.

It sounds easy, but considering that these "toys" are all in nanometer size, and it also includes complex IC design and photolithography technology, etc. Whether a chip can be produced that meets market expectations has almost become an important indicator to measure the foundation of a country's electronics industry.

Leaving aside what this means to a country or an enterprise, let's discuss this issue from a technical point of view.

In the CMOS process, the characteristic size is typically represented by the width of the "gate", that is, the channel length of the MOS device. Generally speaking, the smaller the feature size, the higher the integration level of the chip, the better the performance, and the lower the power consumption.

However, this size cannot be reduced indefinitely.

First of all, silicon atoms have their own width, and the tunneling effect in quantum mechanics will become more and more negligible as the line width continues to shrink. The combination of various factors seriously limits the future of silicon-based chips. .

However, human pursuit of new technology is eternal.

Since silicon-based chips are not enough, it is enough to open up new battlefields on other materials that may work.

According to the latest research, the use of materials such as carbon nanotubes and molybdenum disulfide has opened up a new path for the continuous improvement of the chip manufacturing process, allowing people to see the dawn of the continuation of Moore's Law.

However, the situation is not always so rosy.

Although these two materials have the potential to replace silicon-based chips, due to their respective defects, research institutions worldwide that study silicon-based chip replacement materials have been unable to break through the most critical bottleneck.

That is, using these two pioneering materials, the most core component of the chip - the transistor - was successfully produced!

When researching graphene superconducting materials, Lu Zhou discovered that two sheets of single-layer graphene overlapping at a special angle will exhibit the characteristics of a Mott insulator under special circumstances.

This major discovery not only directly led to the explosive breakthrough of carbon-based superconducting materials, but also laid the foundation for the success of the Pangu controllable fusion reactor.

Not only that, at that time Lu Zhou was keenly aware that this feature can not only be applied in the field of superconductivity, but also play an unexpected role in the field of semiconductors.

Of course, he doesn't know much about the semiconductor industry, and he just made such a judgment out of academic intuition.

At that time, he originally planned to invest in this project with his partner, Manager Sun of Julius Baer Group, but unfortunately, Manager Sun felt that the project was not reliable at the time, and he was not that big as the manager of a subsidiary of China Airlines Group. The right to make decisions, so Tai Chi was rejected.

However, Lu Zhou didn’t care about it. He didn’t lack money, he didn’t lack people, and he didn’t care about losses. After returning to China, he pulled out a research and development team and hung it under the Institute of Computing Materials to carry out this project by himself. up.

It has been two or three years since the establishment of the project, and finally saw the dawn of dawn.

Standing next to the experimental equipment, observing the transistor completed by the carbon-based chip project team through a microscope, Lu Zhou couldn't help but let out a sigh of emotion after a long time.

"pretty……"

Although its raw material is dark graphite, after being stripped into graphene fragments and stacked into transistors, it is like a delicate diamond, exuding brilliance in the images presented by the microscope.

Yang Xu, who was standing beside him, couldn't bear it any longer. Seeing that Lu Zhou moved his eyes from the eyepiece, he hurried forward and said.

"Let me take a look too."

Lu Zhou smiled and stepped aside, giving the eyepiece to Yang Xu.

After looking into the eyepiece for a while, it took about two minutes before he let out a sigh.

"It's really cheap to describe it with diamonds... I dare say that all the diamonds in this world combined cannot compare to the value of this thing."

Lu Zhou laughed.

"That's too exaggerated... But I agree with you, using diamonds to describe it does drop a bit."

If it puts this thing up for auction, even if it calls out a sky-high price enough to buy a whole carload of diamonds, there will be a large group of people willing to pay for it.

after all……

In this small carbon-based transistor, a future full of endless reverie is brewing...

Looking back at the researchers standing behind him, Lu Zhou cleared his throat and said.

"As long as carbon-based transistors can be manufactured, it is equivalent to breaking through the most critical bottleneck of carbon-based chip technology! Although the size of our carbon-based transistor is still an order of magnitude behind the size of common silicon-based transistors on the market, the carbon-based Chips made of transistors, in terms of the theoretical minimum process, are unimaginable for silicon-based chips!"

How unimaginable it is, it is difficult for Lu Zhou to describe in words.

The only thing that is certain is that this great research result has widened the lower limit of the chip process by an entire order of magnitude!

It is no exaggeration to say that if Professor Wu plans to be an academician, with this result, Lu Zhou can find a way to push him up as soon as the next academician co-election year comes.

Even if it doesn't work, it will definitely work after another round!

"You guys are doing a great job!"

Looking at the group of excited researchers and Professor Wu Tianqun whose face was flushed with excitement and pride, Lu Zhou paused for a moment, then continued in a solemn tone.

"Just today, right now, we make history and redefine the future!"