"Liu, Zou, you really aren't pulling my leg?" The moment Lin finished speaking, he felt he had been somewhat tactless.
Both people on the video call were from that aerospace base.
Take Liu Chengdong, for instance. He was the base's second-in-command, and his rank was actually a notch above Lin Weiguo's as director of the Optoelectronics Institute.
It was only because Lin Weiguo was older and more senior that he could address him so familiarly as Liu.
As for Zou Ying, even less needed to be said. She headed the base's technical department and frequently collaborated and exchanged knowledge with sister institutions like the Optoelectronics Institute, so they were very familiar with each other's circumstances.
Take the virtual projection wristwatch that had been developed and put into production first: several of its core technologies had come from the Optoelectronics Institute's technological reserves.
Hearing about the manufacture of a lithography machine with atomic-level precision from two such high-ranking, powerful "acquaintances" inevitably left Lin Weiguo half-convinced and half-doubtful.
It couldn't be helped. The atomic-level precision they had mentioned was simply too incredible!
At this point, a brief overview of the entire chip manufacturing process was necessary: wafer processing-oxidation-photolithography-etching-thin-film deposition-interconnection-testing-packaging.
The most critical technical step among them was photolithography.
What was photolithography?
Put simply, it meant using light with special wave properties to "print" a designed circuit pattern onto a wafer.
The mainstream lithography machines currently on the market could be divided into two types according to their process range. One was the DUV lithography machine, which used an excimer laser to refract a 193-nanometer light source.
DUV lithography machines could generally only achieve 25-nanometer precision. The famous Intel Corporation, for example, had used heavily modified dual-stage systems to bring DUV lithography precision down to 10 nanometers, but could not get below that.