EUV lithography machine has become "abandoned child"?

I still remember that in 18/19, the most popular word in the domestic science and technology circle was "overtaking on a curve." Among them, the chip industry and the word were the most closely combined and most frequently. Nowadays, when more and more domestic semiconductor companies sink their hearts to make chips, the term "overtaking in corners" is not mentioned so often. Probably because, after learning to know the shame, only knowing the art is not good.
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After the domestic chip industry was targeted by the US government, the shortcomings were completely exposed, and EDA design software, semiconductor materials, EUV lithography machines, etc. have become "stuck necks". Under the U.S. government's policy of "shooting the first shot", most aspiring semiconductor companies have chosen the development strategy of keeping a low profile and trying to courage.
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The industrial attitude of domestic chips has indeed been very low in the past two years, but the idea and practice of "overtaking in corners" has not actually been interrupted for a moment. It is a very important attempt to change the ecology of the traditional chip industry through quantum communication technology.
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New progress of the team of academician Guo Guangcan
Recently, the team of Academician Guo Guangcan of the University of Science and Technology of China has made original progress in quantum storage and quantum network research. The results were published in the internationally renowned journal Nature Communications on July 19. From a detailed point of view, the result is an innovation in photon echo. It has applied for an invention patent of "noise-free photon echo", which can be used in my country's original quantum storage solution with independent intellectual property rights.
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In terms of implementation, the solution creatively combines different frequency control pulses and two refocusing processes, so that the upper energy level of the emitted photon echo and the upper energy level of the residual population are different energy levels, so it can be filtered through the spectrum Strictly eliminate the spontaneous emission noise, and solve the problem that the upper energy level of the photon echo emission and the upper energy level of the residual population are necessarily contaminated at the same energy level, so that the technology can be used in the quantum field.
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The reviewers of "Nature Communications" believe that this program is an important development towards high-performance quantum memory.
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Brand new chip track
Quantum chips have always been considered a historic opportunity that domestic chips should not miss. By definition, a quantum chip integrates quantum circuits on a substrate, and then carries the function of quantum information processing, and is regarded as the "brain" of the "future computer". Of course, the transformation of traditional chips to sub-chips is not accomplished overnight, and has gone through multiple stages during this period.
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The first is the proposal of semiconductor quantum dot technology. The core theory of semiconductor quantum dots is that a single-qubit logic gate control and a two-qubit controlled NOT gate can be combined with any universal quantum logic gate control. This method has convenient control, ultra-fast speed, integration, and parallelism. Compatible with important advantages such as traditional semiconductor electronic technology, it lays the foundation for the development of practical semiconductor quantum computing.
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However, semiconductor quantum dot technology also has drawbacks. It uses the exchange interaction between adjacent quantum dots and qubits to achieve multi-bit quantum logic gate operations. The logic gate operations between non-neighboring qubits need to pass through a series of neighboring gates. The combination of operations is completed, which greatly increases the number and difficulty of logic gate operations in the calculation process.
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After semiconductor quantum dots, superconducting qubit systems have become the mainstream. The latter uses concepts such as superconducting transmission resonant cavities to realize a quantum data bus in which semiconductor quantum dots are coupled with non-neighboring qubits, which solves the problem of information transmission between non-adjacent quantum dots.
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At present, domestic companies are already committed to fully open up the superconducting qubit system industry chain. Not long ago, Hefei Benyuan Quantum and Hefei Jinghe Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. signed a cooperation agreement. The two parties will jointly build a Benyuan-Jinghe Quantum Chip Joint Laboratory, dedicated to realizing the development of the entire chain from quantum chip design to packaging and testing. Currently, the company has launched two superconducting quantum chips, the 6-bit Kuafu KF C6-130 and the 24-bit Kuafu KF C24-300.
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Kuafu KF C24-300 (Picture source: Origin Quantum official website)
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Then back to the topic of our article. The team of Academician Guo Guangcan has promoted the progress of optical qubits in quantum storage through the "noise-free photon echo" technology, which has cleared another important obstacle for the realization of optical quantum chips. Quantum has many obscure theories, including quantum superposition, quantum collapse, and quantum entanglement. Among them, quantum computing needs to realize quantum entanglement in order to realize information processing, and the more entanglement, the better. The quantum storage is to transmit information through light quanta, and store information through atoms. The storage based on light quantum echo technology mainly uses the principle of controlled reversible non-uniform broadening. After the medium completely absorbs the light signal, it releases the same after a period of time. The echo signal of the quantum state. The original plan will inevitably have the problem of noise pollution, which will eventually lead to information distortion. The team of Academician Guo Guangcan has solved this problem.
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In recent years, the team of Academician Guo Guangcan has repeatedly made breakthroughs in the field of optical quantum chips. Not long ago, the team published research results in Physical Review Letters. Based on the photonic energy valley Hall effect, quantum interference was realized in the energy valley-related topological insulator chip structure.
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In addition to the team of Academician Guo Guangcan, the team of Jin Xianmin of Shanghai Jiaotong University is also a representative team in the field of optical quantum chips in my country. It was also a few days ago that Jin Xianmin’s team proposed the first scalable dedicated optical quantum computing scheme based on a photonic integrated chip for physical systems, and for the first time implemented a quantum acceleration algorithm for the "fast arrival" problem in an experiment.
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As the problems on the optical quantum technology route are overcome one by one, the chip industry is expected to create an evolution route that no longer requires EUV lithography machines. Here, we need to mention the difference between light quantum chips and electronic chips. The advancement of electronic chips is to make transistors smaller and smaller, and to achieve higher system performance per chip area. Therefore, the manufacturing process of electronic chips will extend along 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, and 5nm all the way down. When the process reaches 7nm and below, the EUV lithography machine is indispensable. Therefore, when the EUV lithography machine becomes a "stuck neck" link, my country will not be able to enter the field of electronic chip manufacturing below 7nm.
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In contrast, due to the transmission medium, the photon chip itself has the advantages of high speed, low power consumption and anti-interference. At the same time, the photon chip does not pursue the extreme advanced manufacturing process, and the mature process can give play to the advantages of the high performance of the system. , Is widely optimistic in the fields of computing, transmission, storage and display.
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From concept to landing
Quantum communication technology is highly valued in our country, and most of the current researches are based on the quantum entanglement theory of light quantum communication technology. The academic end has solved the technical problems related to photons from a technical point of view time and time again, but to achieve the landing still requires the participation of the industry.
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From the perspective of progress, my country has already begun industrialization in the field of quantum secure communications and is at the international leading level. In September 2017, the world's first quantum secure communication trunk line, the Beijing-Shanghai trunk line, was officially opened. In the future, such communication security technology will play a huge role in the military and civilian fields. At present, a large number of domestic listed companies have been included in the "quantum communication" concept stocks, including Yaguang Technology, Guodeng Electronics, Hengtong Optoelectronics and China Great Wall.
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In the field of chips, we have seen the potential of light quantum chips and an opportunity for "overtaking on a curve." Of course, some people say that when everyone is running at high speed, it is not possible to overtake a corner, and it is only possible to change lanes. At present, there are already domestic companies making quantum chips. If the vision of these companies is finally realized, then we have indeed opened up a new track.