176: Chapter 176 Subnanometer Lithography Machine Ignites, Foundation for the Lunar Palace Takes Initial Shape!

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 70.

10:00 AM, B2 level of Pangu Laboratory.

Su Che stared at the code repository on the screen.

The progress bar for the "Sub-nanometer Quantum Chip Manufacturing Manual" had reached 15%.

Zhao Mingyuan was typing away at the adjacent workstation at an extremely high frequency.

"I've retrieved the gravity gradient drift data for the orbital environment."

He pushed a data packet over. "The microgravity environment in the Dry Dock manufacturing module isn't absolute zero; there's a residual disturbance of 10 to the power of negative six G."

Su Che dragged the data packet into the manufacturing manual.

"Add the residual disturbance compensation to the underlying planning of the deposition module." Su Che pressed Enter. "Sixty-four atom parallel deposition, keep the landing offset tolerance within 0.5 picometers."

Zhao Mingyuan pulled over a blank document and began restructuring the compensation equation.

On the east side of the hall.

Wen Bo was crouching in the material testing area, holding a grayish-white brick sample in his hand.

This was the first version of the test sample pressed from lunar soil and polymer binder.

He placed the brick on the hydraulic testing machine and started the pressurization.

The dial pointer climbed rapidly.

At 30 MPa, the edges of the brick began to crumble. At 42 MPa, a crack appeared in the middle of the brick. At 45 MPa, with a bang, the brick shattered into three pieces.

Wen Bo turned off the hydraulic machine, picked up a fragment, and examined the cross-section.

"The binder distribution is uneven." He threw the fragment into the waste bin. "In the vacuum environment of the lunar surface, moisture cannot be used as a dispersion medium, and the homogeneity of the dry mixing process is too poor."

Liu Huaqiang stood nearby, making a mark on his notebook with a mechanical pencil.

"Switch to ultrasonic vibration dry mixing?" he suggested.

"Ultrasonic equipment is too heavy to take to the moon." Academician Li Zhengyang walked over, carrying a thermos. "Use electrostatic adsorption. Lunar soil particles are naturally charged; if we charge the binder powder with the opposite static electricity, the mixing efficiency will be higher than ultrasonic."

Wen Bo went to the storage cabinet to look for a static electricity generator.

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 71. 2:00 PM.

The main screen in the center of the monitoring wall was split into two.

On the left was the panoramic view of the Near-Earth Orbit Base. The main structures of the control module, energy module, and life support module had all been docked, and the external Quantum Communication antenna array had been deployed.

On the right was the interior of the Dry Dock manufacturing module. The cargo bay doors of the luan bird verification ship were open. The robotic arm dragged the seven huge shockproof and temperature-controlled boxes out one by one, sending them into the clean assembly area of the manufacturing module. These were the seven core modules of the Sub-nanometer lithography all-in-one machine.

Su Che sat in front of the main console, his hands resting on the keyboard.

"Light source cavity module in position, docking locked." Zhou Dehai's voice came over the dedicated line from Kaitian Base; he was remotely monitoring the assembly precision from there. "Twelve-sided mirror optical path module entering orbit, flange aligned."

Su Che watched as the silver-gray robotic arm on the screen slowly pushed the two modules together. The docking gap disappeared.

"Power on the optical path module temperature control array." Su Che issued the command.

Telemetry data streams flooded the screen. The substrate temperature of the twelve-sided mirror began to drop, steadily stopping at 3 Kelvin. Temperature fluctuation: 0.0001 Kelvin.

"Deposition chamber module docking started." Zhou Dehai continued to report the nodes.

Orbital assembly was extremely time-consuming. Without gravity to help, the tightening of every bolt required reaction force compensation.

Su Che stared for three hours, and the first three modules were assembled. He leaned back in his chair, picked up the bottle of mineral water on the table, unscrewed it, and took a sip.

The "Sub-nanometer Quantum Chip Manufacturing Manual" was half finished. The logical framework for the downgraded bootstrap had already been built. He was just waiting for the lithography machine to be finished so they could ignite and test it.

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 72. 9:00 AM.

Zhao Mingyuan finalized the pre-adaptation code for deposition scheduling and pushed it into the encrypted repository.

"Pre-adaptation is done. In the microgravity environment of the Dry Dock manufacturing module, the trajectory interference rate for parallel deposition of sixty-four atoms has dropped to zero."

Su Che nodded and merged the code into the manufacturing manual. He pulled up the parameter configuration table for the downgraded chip.

"For the first chip, reduce the quantum dot arrangement density to 60% of the full-power version." Su Che pointed at the screen. "Relax the quantum state locking precision by two times."

Zhao Mingyuan leaned in to look at the parameters. "Once this thing is made, its computing power won't even be half of the full-power version."

"It's enough to run the calibration module." Su Che locked the configuration table. "Use it to drive the calibration module to build the second chip. The second chip can reach 80%. Then use the second chip to build the third, and the full-power version will be out."

Zhao Mingyuan sat back at his workstation, pulled over the keyboard, and began writing the iterative script for the second chip.

On the east side of the hall, Wen Bo placed the third version of the lunar building material brick sample on the hydraulic testing machine.

Electrostatic adsorption dry mixing process, combined with the 800-degree, 50 MPa hot-pressing curve calculated by Academician Li Zhengyang.

The hydraulic machine started. The pointer steadily crossed 45 MPa, 50 MPa, 60 MPa, 80 MPa. The brick didn't budge.

It wasn't until 112 MPa that a notch broke off the edge of the brick.

"The compressive strength limit of Earth's C60 high-strength concrete is around 60 MPa." Wen Bo turned off the machine. "This brick is nearly twice as hard as C60."

Liu Huaqiang signed his name on the acceptance report. "The mechanical structure drawings for the building material molding machine were finalized yesterday, and the portable processing scheme has also passed simulation."

Su Che heard this at the main console. Within the planned time, Liu Huaqiang's team hadn't delayed for a single day.

Alien civilization navigation timer, day 73. 10:00 AM.

In the image on the right side of the monitoring wall, inside the Dry Dock manufacturing module, the last control system module was pushed into the main frame of the all-in-one machine by the robotic arm. All seven modules were integrated.

A silver, rectangular machine was floating in the center of the manufacturing module. There were no excess cables on the surface, and all interfaces were locked internally.

"All modules docked." Zhou Dehai's voice came through.

Su Che placed his hands on the keyboard. "No-load ignition self-test program, start."

The command traveled through the Quantum Communication network and instantly reached the Dry Dock 400 kilometers away.

Inside the lithography all-in-one machine, the ultra-low temperature quantum power supply unit was activated. The wavefront correction system for the twelve-sided mirror went online. The quantum field generator started.

Telemetry data flooded the left side of Su Che's screen like a waterfall. Optical path transmittance: 99.9%. Quantum field clamping force field uniformity: up to standard. Anti-shake temperature control system residual vibration: 0.2 picometers. All green.

The lithography machine opened its eyes in the Tiangong.

In his mind, a mechanical voice popped up on time. [Ding! Lunar side mission "The First Brick on the Moon!" completed!]

[The full system verification of the simple lunar soil building material molding machine has passed! The soil solidification formula has a compressive strength of 112 MPa, the portable processing scheme is adapted to the low-gravity environment of the moon, and the molding machine drawings are up to standard!]

[Mission reward: 80,000 skill points!]

Immediately after, a new prompt box popped up. [Ding! Detected that the Lunar Development Base lacks large-scale assembly tools, lunar side mission triggered!]

[Mission name: Install a steel arm on the moon!]

[Mission content: You've made the bricks, but who will build the wall? It's impossible to build a base relying on the manual labor of astronauts! Please develop a multi-functional lunar construction robotic arm to achieve multi-degree-of-freedom control and extraterrestrial operation adaptation, laying the foundation for subsequent robot clusters!]

[Mission reward: 90,000 skill points, unlock redemption permissions for robotic arm multi-degree-of-freedom control technology, extraterrestrial operation adaptation technology, and multi-functional execution end integration technology, requiring 45,000 redemption points.]

[Current host main skill point balance is sufficient, do you want to redeem?]

"Redeem." Su Che issued the command.

[Ding! Consumed 45,000 main skill points, core technologies unlocked!]

[System prompt: Supporting auxiliary technologies have not been redeemed, including: construction robotic arm drawings (4,000 redemption points), multi-functional execution end design (3,000 redemption points), extraterrestrial operation algorithm library (3,000 redemption points), total redemption points: 10,000.]

"Redeem all."

[Ding! Consumed 10,000 main skill points.]

The data packet flooded into his consciousness space. Su Che organized the technical framework of the robotic arm into a document and pushed it directly to Liu Huaqiang's terminal.

"Dean Liu," Su Che turned his head. "The sixth item of lunar development: multi-functional lunar construction robotic arm."

Liu Huaqiang walked to the main console and glanced at the document.

"Multi-degree-of-freedom control and execution end integration, about three days."

"OK, thank you for your hard work." Su Che confirmed the timeline. Liu Huaqiang turned and walked back to the east side, calling Wen Bo and Academician Li Zhengyang to start work.

Su Che took back his gaze. On the left screen, the no-load self-test of the lithography all-in-one machine had finished its third round. The status was extremely stable.

The "Quantum Ultimate Isolation Medium" redeemed from the interstellar material library had already been sent up with the prefabricated parts and was encapsulated in the core cavity of the deposition chamber.

"Everything is ready." Zhao Mingyuan slid his chair over, staring at the green light on the screen.

"Prepare for material feeding." Su Che pulled up the "Sub-nanometer Quantum Chip Manufacturing Manual."

Inside the Dry Dock, the robotic arm picked up a piece of ultra-high purity silicon wafer and slowly fed it into the feed port of the lithography all-in-one machine. The manufacturing process for the first downgraded chip officially started.

Su Che pressed the execute button. Inside the all-in-one machine, the quantum coherent state light field lit up.

The light beam with a wavelength of 0.01 nanometers, after the extreme focusing of the twelve-sided mirror, hit the surface of the silicon wafer. Atomic-level surface reconstruction began.

Under the clamping of the quantum field, silicon atoms were stripped, moved, and used to fill defects one by one. The landing deviation was fed back to Su Che's screen in real-time. 4.8 picometers. 5.0 picometers. 4.9 picometers. All within design tolerance.

Su Che picked up the mineral water bottle on the table. It was empty. Lin Waner walked over, took away the three empty bottles, and put down a cup of warm goji berry water. The cup was glass and had no lid. Su Che picked it up and took a sip.

The first step of substrate preparation would take twelve hours. Tomorrow, the sixty-four-atom parallel deposition would truly begin to build the logic gates of the chip. There were three days left until the final chip was offline on day 76.

The alien sentry ship continued to approach in the depths of the universe. In Earth's orbit, an unprecedented machine was carving out the future of humanity.

Su Che placed his hands on the keyboard and did not move again. The data stream on the screen was refreshing quietly.