The Institute of Optoelectronics of the New Academy of Sciences is a relatively mysterious unit, and the technologies developed here in the past were relatively sensitive. For example, laser guidance modules and fast CCD chips, before the wafer fab was established, Xinke's output would only be able to meet the internal needs of the military system. Iraq's seven billion projects alone swallowed 80% of the production capacity here.

As the core technology provider for foreign exchange earning in military industrial systems, the Optoelectronics Research Institute will certainly not easily appear within the field of view of ordinary people.

Shengjing Military Region specially allocated a newly built five-story building within the headquarters of the 40th Army to Xinke Company, specifically to protect the production of optoelectronic chips.

At the gate of the Optoelectronics Research Institute, there is a full guard squad in charge of garrisoning. Even the cadres of the Forty Army are prohibited from approaching.

Of course, these security settings do not exist at all for the directors of the Optoelectronics Research Institute.

A silver Rolls-Royce elves rushed into the gate of the Forty Army headquarters at a speed of lightning. The guards on both sides quickly raised their hands to salute, watching Dean Bai, who was full of excitement in the driver's seat, drive the car almost flying.

In less than a moment, the car had arrived in front of the Optoelectronics Research Institute. The friction between the tires and the ground caused by the brakes could be heard clearly by almost the entire military compound.

Wang Ye, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was so scared that he was sweating coldly at Bai Shi's driving speed, but he couldn't help Hu Wenhai, who was sitting in the back seat, repeatedly urging him. Before the car could stop, Hu Wenhai had already jumped out of the car, which made Wang Ye, who had put his heart back in his place, scared him so much that his heart almost popped out of his throat again.

"Uncle Bai, let's go!"

Hu Wenhai had no patience to wait for Bai Shi to turn off the car. In fact, Bai Shi didn't pull the key off the igniter at all. He subconsciously pulled the handbrake and got out of the car.

The two of them were almost racing, and pushed open the gate of the Optoelectronics Research Institute and rushed into the building.

“Where is the laboratory location?”

"Turn left on the second floor!"

Shiraishi shouted and rushed up the stairs opposite the lobby on the first floor.

The sound of footsteps sounded in the building, attracting many people in the office on the first floor to poke their heads out. In the past, people with such a rough style were rare in the research institutes that even walked and spoke softly.

Of course, as the director of the institute, Shiraishi's actions will not be criticized.

The second floor of the institute is a large laboratory, and the non-load-bearing walls on the entire floor have been opened. A whole piece of floor-to-ceiling glass is left at the entrance of the stairwell, leaving only a very tightly sealed aluminum alloy door.

Shiraishi took his ID card from his neck, swiped it on the card reader, and then entered the password again, which opened the door.

There is a dressing room inside the door. Hu Wenhai took a set of dustproof clothing and put it on, and then passed the dust removal passage and entered the clean room on the second floor.

"Where is it?" Hu Wenhai's muffled voice came from his mask and asked Bai Shi next to him.

"President Hu comes with me." Bai Shi took the lead and walked into the laboratory.

The two of them walked not far away and saw a dismantled device. Judging from the logo on its open cabinet, it was a vapor deposition device produced by Applied Materials, which is commonly known as CVD equipment.

However, this CVD equipment has obviously undergone some renovations now. The complete cabinet has been opened in many places. The original complete shell is obviously the pipelines added later. On the external pipelines, there are many instruments added later. The CVD equipment, which was originally full of high-tech aesthetics, has now become a holy object of the Feitian Pasta God Cult after such a "disfigurement".

"Success?" Hu Wenhai did not dislike the roughness and disorganization of the equipment at all. Instead, his eyes emitted an excited look and looked at Bai Shi and asked in disbelief.

"Success!" Shiraishi nodded heavily.

Hu Wenhai looked up from the equipment and searched around: "Is there any finished product?"

Shiraishi turned around and took out a round mirror chip from a bracket that emitted streaming light. As the light passed through its mirror, some gray-toned colorful halos were constantly refracted.

Turn the wafer in one direction, and it is quite thin on the back, vaguely emitting a transparent layer with very little blue light. It can be seen that the mirror in front "transition" from this transparent layer.

“How is the growth?”

"It's perfect!" Shiraishi smiled: "We used the two growth methods proposed by Mr. Hu to improve the growth methods of Akasaki Yoshi and Amano Hiroshi, used low-temperature gallium nitride to replace aluminum nitride as a buffer layer, and continued to grow gallium nitride with a high temperature of 1030 degrees above the low-temperature gallium nitride, thus solving the problem of unstable gallium nitride crystal quality caused by lattice mismatch."

"What about cost?" Hu Wenhai continued.

"Because of the huge increase in yield rates, the cost is more than 40% lower than the current production methods of the Japanese."

"Okay! OK! OK!"

Hu Wenhai rubbed his hands and shouted three good words excitedly. He took the chip from Bai Shi's hand and looked at it carefully.

Of course, in fact, the resolution of the human eye cannot tell whether it is good or bad. But Hu Wenhai was already overjoyed just by the colorful streaming light flashing from the mirror.

As if he wanted to seek credit from Hu Wenhai, Shiraishi said with relish: "Our magnesium-doped gallium nitride uses nitrogen and hydrogen as protective gas during the deposition of CVD. In fact, the low-resistance P-type gallium nitride semiconductor made has better performance than the semiconductors currently obtained by Japanese people using aluminum nitride as buffer layer. According to the data I measured, our P-type gallium nitride resistivity is 0.2Ω.cm, and the hole concentration reaches 3×10 to the power of 18/cubic centimeter."

"Compared with the Japanese resistivity 12Ω.cm and hole concentration 10 to the 17th power of 10, the cost reduction is not enough! With this gallium nitride epitaxial chip, the performance and cost of blue light LEDs will be reduced to an incredible level!"

That's right, the chip about 2 inches in Hu Wenhai's hand is the core technology of the blue light LED chip - gallium nitride epitaxial chip.

Unlike other semiconductor chips, the core technology of LED chip production is not IC design and lithography machine, but crystal growth technology. The principle of LED chip lighting is very simple, which is the process of current P-terminus flowing to N-terminus. Free electrons at P-terminus are combined in holes at N-terminus, and photons will be radiated at the joint between P-terminus. This PN-structured semiconductor is only the most commonly used part in semiconductor design.

There is no need for too small lithography line width and no need for complex circuit design. In the later generations, many LED chip manufacturers in China and their equipment were replaced by eight-hand photolithography machines from domestic wafer fabs. It can be imagined that the technical difficulties here are not undefeated. With gallium nitride epitaxial chips, lithography, packaging and more downstream industries, it is only a matter of time to develop.

It goes without saying that everyone knows how big the LED lighting market is. The LED light source market is enough to support the opening of ten new fab-level LED chip production bases in China. With this foundation, the Chinese semiconductor industry does not have to worry about insufficient motivation for growth.

And what's more wonderful is that the capital and technical requirements for LED chip production are not that high, and domestic capital and technological efforts can be completely digested. Instead of squeezing foreign capital, it can earn a large amount of foreign exchange, which will inevitably cause a wave of domestic investment in the semiconductor industry.

With this east wind, as Hu Wenhai said to Zhang Zhongmou, he was not worried that someone would compete with him for the market. On the contrary, what he was worried about was that there were too few people and the market could not be built.

However, it is still not easy to implement the technology of blue light LED, but the core technology here has changed from design and lithography to wafer production. LED chip epitaxial sheet, that is, the wafer of gallium nitride, is a gallium nitride crystal layer grown on a sapphire. Just such a thin, 50nm gallium nitride crystal layer has troubled humans for more than 30 years.

As long as Xinke firmly holds the supply of gallium nitride epitaxial chips, it can obtain a steady stream of profits from this market.

Historically, this was the result of winning the Nobel Prize! The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura because of the invention of blue light LED.

Among them, Akasaki Yuki and Amano Hiroshi won the award because they first obtained high-quality gallium nitride crystals, while Shuji Nakamura's achievements reduced the performance and cost of gallium nitride to an acceptable level.

Although Akasaki Yuki and Hiroshi Amano have achieved high-quality gallium nitride in the laboratory, Shuji Nakamura's technology to improve the growth performance of gallium nitride was not developed until 1992.

The key to improving the growth technology of GaN is two points. One is to use the two-stage method to grow GaN, and use a low-temperature GaN layer grown at 550 degrees to replace the aluminum nitride crystal layer as the buffer layer to solve the problem of lattice mismatch. The other is to blow the protective gas of nitrogen and hydrogen in the vertical direction of the main gas stream during the chemical deposition process of the production of GaN, which is the famous dual-air flow MOCVD technology later.

With these two improvements, Shuji Nakamura completely transformed blue light LED from a scientific toy to a great invention that changed human life.

The difficulty in manufacturing LED gallium nitride epitaxial films is the development of dual-air MOCVD. However, thanks to the current China-US honeymoon period, CVD equipment that Americans don’t sell is killed, under the cover of Hu Wenhai’s fab project, it can also enter China openly.

The low design requirements, low lithography technology and tricky solutions of LED lighting chips are simply projects tailor-made for Xinke Fabs.

This was originally a place that Hu Wenhai planned to prepare for equipment elimination after the equipment aging of Xinke Fabs could not keep up with the mainstream level in a few years. Who would have thought that Bai Shi's Optoelectronics Research Institute had produced results so quickly. Although there are high-quality CVD equipment sold by the American Applied Materials Company, Hu Wenhai underestimated the domestic technology research and development capabilities at this time.

The difficulty of the two key technologies of gallium nitride epitaxial sheet lies in the idea of ​​material selection and temperature control. However, Mr. Hu directly told Bai Shi the specific data, of course, he tried it and it was accurate.

Another is the requirement to transform CVD into dual-air MOCVD. This technology may be a little more difficult, but in the end it is just a problem of engineering transformation, not a difficult technical research and development.

If you can’t get the mature design of industrial products, you can still get the laboratory level. Even if there are any difficulties, you can do some tricks without requiring industrial mass production.

So Hu Wenhai expected that it would take two or three years to produce results. The wafer fab there had been results here before it was built.

But after all, this is a good thing. Hu Wenhai's "too fast" trouble is a sweet burden.

Hu Wenhai lay in the laboratory and carefully checked the gallium nitride epitaxial tablet on his hand. As Shiraishi said, it can be said that it is a comprehensive crush on the performance of the Japanese gallium nitride epitaxial tablet.

With gallium nitride epitaxial chips, the production of LED lighting chips can be said to be no difficulty.

After staying in the laboratory for a whole morning, Hu Wenhai and Bai Shi's stomachs were almost trembling, and then they walked out of the laboratory.

"Uncle Bai, your Optoelectronics Research Institute is about to show off now. With such an important technological breakthrough, just say, what reward do you want?"

Shiraishi thought about it and laughed: "I have almost made enough money, but I just missed the name..."

"Oh?" Hu Wenhai was slightly stunned. He had ignored the academic community in the past two years. Although he had achieved a lot of results, he never paid attention to giving himself a face in the academic community.

He nodded and said, "It's easy to deal with Uncle Bai's idea. With the achievements of Blue Light LED, we will be almost the same as we can apply for a National Technology Invention Award, right?"

Hu Wenhai was sure to win this. After all, it was Nobel-level technology, and there was no reason why he couldn't even win a domestic technological invention award.

Shiraishi's eyes lit up when he heard this, and he nodded and said, "If I could win the National Technology Invention Award, I would be worth it in my life!"

"Okay!" Hu Wenhai said cheerfully: "This period should be the application time for the national award? Let's report the results of gallium nitride in the name of the new science!"

Hu Wenhai was talking, but finally took off his dust and walked out of the laboratory.

As soon as he came out of the door, he saw Wang Ye, who was already anxious like an ant in a hot pan, running over the stairs.

"Mr. Hu, your phone number."

Wang Ye handed over to his elder brother. If it weren't for the important matter, few people would call him.

"Where did it come from? What's the matter?" Hu Wenhai asked instead without rushing to answer the phone.

"Director Song of the Science and Technology Commission called it in person, but he didn't speak well!"

Hu Wenhai was stunned and glanced at Bai Shi. Some things in this world were really so coincidental. Cao Cao couldn't help but talk about it. Didn't Cao Cao come?

"I'm sure it's Director Song of the Science and Technology Commission?" Hu Wenhai thought to himself, could it be that there was a telecommunications fraud so early?

"It has been confirmed." Wang Ye said firmly.

Hu Wenhai had no choice but to take the phone from his hand and clear his throat: "I am Hu Wenhai."

"It's the comrade of Xinke Company!" On the phone, Director Song's voice couldn't hear anything: "Hello, I'm Song Jian, director of the Science and Technology Commission."

"Hello, Director Song, I happened to have something to look for you, but I didn't expect to receive your call. I wonder what happened if you called me?"

"Oh?" Director Song snorted on the phone and said, "It seems that Mr. Hu knew what he had done? Aren't you causing trouble for the work of the Science and Technology Commission? If you can't communicate well, what should you do in such a sudden attack? You comrade..."

Hu Wenhai was stunned by Director Song and hurriedly said, "Director Song, have you had any misunderstandings? I didn't say anything yet!"

"Hmph——" Director Song cursed, as if he was a little better, and said, "Okay, what do you have to say? I'll listen to your explanation first!"

Hu Wenhai was inexplicably surprised, but thinking about it seems that Director Song of the Science and Technology Commission's future generations was very good. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding?

He looked at Shiraishi and said carefully: "Director Song, that's the case. Our Xinke Company's Xinke Academy has recently achieved an achievement. The important core technology of blue light LED and the growth problem of gallium nitride crystals has been overcome by us. The gallium nitride developed and produced by our Xinke Academy of Optoelectronics Research Institute has a resistance performance of 24 times that of the Japanese and a hole performance of 30 times that of the Japanese. Regarding this achievement, we want to apply for a National Technology Invention Award..."

Before Hu Wenhai finished speaking, a loud bang suddenly came from the phone, and then a busy tone was beating.

Bai Shi looked at Hu Wenhai hopefully, but unexpectedly he was covered in confusion.

"Director Song, is it late in menopause?"
To be continued...