409: Chapter 859 The Concept of a Photolithography Plant!

Professor Ross placed the paper on the table, his face turning extremely grim.

The tweet where he previously questioned the source of Zhao Yang's data was still up online; although he had remained silent and hadn't mentioned it since that time, that questioning had never been formally retracted.

And now, Zhao Yang had directly responded to everyone with a second paper.

Those voices saying "the data might be problematic" seemed exceptionally pale and ridiculous in the face of two complete experiments that mutually corroborated each other.

Staring at the cover of the paper for a long time, Professor Ross shook his head slightly, flipped the printout over face-down on the table, and turned to look out the window.

The postdoctoral researcher standing nearby didn't dare to say a word and quietly exited the office.

The international academic community was unusually quiet this time.

Most of the scholars who had previously joined Professor Ross in questioning Zhao Yang's data chose silence; not a single heavyweight scholar stood up to speak.

But this did not affect the heat of the online public opinion.

After Zhao Yang's paper title was translated into English on Twitter, it quickly climbed to the hot topics in the academic discussion section, retweets soared, and there was all sorts of chatter in the comment section.

"Zhao Yang published another one. How long has it been since the last one? How many people are actually in his lab? How does he do it??"

"I spent the whole night finishing this paper. To be honest, although I could understand less than a third of it, the part I did understand already shocked me. He explained the upstream regulatory mechanism of mitochondrial Biology too clearly."

"Too amazing! Why is there such an amazing scholar? Can papers of this level just be published casually?"

"I wonder what Professor Ross thinks now?"

"He must be very embarrassed! Although, Professor Ross could continue to question the data in this paper, it's a pity that this paper has already answered some questions from the previous one, so it's hard to fool people into believing him now!"

The style of discussion on the domestic internet was completely different from the international web.

No one was mentioning Professor Ross's name anymore; the netizens' attention was entirely focused on the value of the paper itself and Zhao Yang's publication speed.

"I want to ask if any knowledgeable brothers can evaluate the value of this paper? I read the abstract for a long time and only saw a bunch of technical terms I don't recognize."

"If you're a complete layman, don't bother reading it. I can only say you don't need to understand it; just know that after this paper was published, that Professor Ross who claimed God Zhao's data was faked hasn't dared to make a sound since. Even his Twitter has stopped updating for a long time."

"Let me seriously analyze the core findings of this paper. In the previous article, God Zhao proved that cells can initiate a Directed Evolution program under specific stimuli; in this new paper, he directly found a positive feedback regulatory mechanism downstream of this program. This is equivalent to not only finding the switch but also finding the first circuit behind the switch. For the entire Biology field, the significance of this discovery might be even greater than the last one."

"Holy crap? That awesome!? Wasn't the previous paper already creating a huge stir? This one is even more awesome?"

"That's right!"

"The speed at which God Zhao is publishing papers now is simply too fast. How many times in a row is this? Every time, it's bombshell-level stuff. Peers in other laboratories are probably questioning their lives right now."

"I've already questioned it for them. There's an associate professor in our department who saved up for a long time to write one paper, and it was killed by Zhao Yang's paper before it was even submitted. He hasn't said a word in the office for the past few days; he just stands with his hands behind his back every day, staring blankly at Weiming Lake."

Zhao Yang paid no attention to these discussions.

After processing the data sent by Wang Hai, he sent it to General Li.

Just after sending it, he received a call from Liang Mengsong from Changcheng.

Liang Mengsong's tone was much heavier than usual.

"Boss, there's been some trouble at the Changcheng factory area. Recently, there have been more foreign faces near the park, and several of them have been walking around the perimeter repeatedly under the guise of investment inspections. Our security team checked the surveillance records of the surrounding area and did a comparison, finding several different groups of people. Not only that, but there are also a few people disguised as equipment suppliers who are trying to get information out of our employees, probing for process information about the production line. We may have been targeted."

Zhao Yang leaned back on the sofa, his tone very calm.

"Is it about the 22nm pre-production?"

"Yes. Actually, there were some signs even earlier. The shell company we registered in Singapore also received a notice to cooperate with an investigation a while ago. The other party is aggressive, clearly wanting to follow the trail to find out the true source of this batch of Lithography machines here in Changcheng. There are also some chip design companies that have revealed to us that foreign firms have privately hinted that they are not allowed to transfer foundry orders to us. The next step is likely to be formal trade sanctions."

Zhao Yang was silent for a moment. He had been mentally prepared for this.

chip foundry is different from pharmaceutical R&D; the 32nm and 22nm nodes are already highly sensitive technical no-go zones in the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Relying on the shell company Shin-chan set up in Singapore and that logistics operation of swapping things out, it was already quite good to have kept it hidden for a few years.

When the mass production scale increased and the market share began to impact the core clients of TSMC and Samsung, being discovered was only a matter of time.

"How is the progress of domestic independent Lithography machine R&D?"

There was helplessness in Liang Mengsong's voice.

"The progress isn't great. The light source part is still in the final stages of a tough battle, the positioning accuracy of the workpiece stage has a clear gap compared to ASML, and the maturity of the overall machine integration is still far from mass production. In the reports from various research groups in the middle of last year, Lithography machines were listed as a priority, but the R&D cycle and verification process for hardware are what they are. It's unlikely to completely replace this batch of imported equipment within five years."

"What about photoresist? Also, etching machines and ion implanters—what is the situation with domestic substitution for these supporting links?"

"The basic formula for photoresist has been figured out, but there is still a significant gap in stability and defect rate compared to imported products. Some key components of the etching machines and implanters still rely on imports; once foreign firms cut off the supply chain, our substitute suppliers have not yet completed production-line level verification."

Zhao Yang was silent for a while after listening.

Engineering matters, especially the entire semiconductor industry chain, are indeed not things that can be pushed forward by one or two people.

Lithography machines involve extreme technologies in dozens of disciplines, including optics, precision machinery, fluid mechanics, and materials science; every step requires a large number of engineers to spend time repeatedly debugging.

He suddenly thought of a special production mode that appeared in later generations against the backdrop of a chip blockade.

If the high automation of the entire production line could be deepened, and the various processes that were originally operated separately could be relatively concentrated to reduce intermediate transfer links, perhaps some existing conditions could be combined to find a workaround.

"Dr. Liang, we can tentatively establish a highly automated chip factory. The core idea of this concept is to seamlessly connect these processes—lithography, etching, thin-film deposition, as well as ion implantation and inspection—to minimize intermediate links as much as possible. This plan can't solve all problems, but it might be able to hedge against some of the pressure from the outside."

Liang Mengsong was silent for a moment on the other end of the phone, then slowly spoke.

"Boss, if this thing can really be connected as you said, we can find a way to do a verification on the basis of the existing equipment first. Several companies in the country that do automation integration have technical dealings with us; we can sound them out first and then come up with a plan."