Chapter 179 Tominaga Junji
"Of course, I know we can't agree to the Federation's request. China is like a hungry beast. They are eager for someone to jump out and help them prove their strength.

Of course I know this, but just like the semiconductor agreement we signed with the federal government in the 1980s, the semiconductor agreement seriously damaged the interests of Neon Semiconductor. Do we have any choice?

We can no more refuse the Union's demands than Perry blew open the neon gates at Edo Bay in 1852."

In July 1853, General Perry of the Confederacy drove a black ship to blast open the closed door of Japan, forcing the Tokugawa Shogunate, the actual ruler of Japan at the time, to open its doors.

The two sides signed the Neon Federation Treaty, forcing Neon to open its ports.

It has been more than a hundred years to this day. Neon has resisted in the meantime. Pearl Harbor was a landmark event in the process of resistance, but the resistance failed.

While Kishida was looking for objective reasons for his behavior, Nikon had already reached an agreement with the Chinese side behind the scenes. Nikon's president went to China more than five times and finally convinced the Chinese side that Nikon would enter the entire new technology industry chain in China.

The price Nikon paid for this was that the lithography machine technology they developed based on topological semimetals must be fully disclosed to China, and the technical patents must be jointly owned by both parties.

In other words, in the future, under the leadership of Nikon, everyone will share half of the research and development technology.

"This is unfair. China has the manufacturing technology for topological semimetals. After they have advanced process technology, they can make topological chips on their own without Nikon. If we lose China, the topological lithography machine will be useless."

Nikon executives expressed their dissatisfaction, believing that this was an unequal agreement. What they were even more afraid of was that after they helped China complete its technological upgrade, they would be kicked out.

Just as America once did to them.

It was once thought that the semiconductor industry agreement that Japan was forced to sign in the 80s was only temporary because it restricted Japan's export of computer chips to America, but it also harmed the interests of American computer manufacturers, who had to use more expensive computer chips, thereby raising the cost of computers for all Americans.

For this reason, the Japanese industry did not take the signed agreement seriously at the time. They believed that it was just a temporary difficulty and that American computer manufacturers would not be able to withstand the rising costs and would put pressure on Washington.

However, this was just their wishful thinking. America supported the semiconductor manufacturers of Korea and 4V and took away Japan's orders. Japan fell from being the overlord of the entire semiconductor industry chain to a raw material provider. The technical content of the raw material provider is very high, but the profit it gets is obviously far less than that of the overlord of the entire industry chain.

"This is indeed unfair, and it is also a gamble. If we don't take this gamble, we will be marginalized in the field of lithography machines and will never have the hope of catching up with ASML.

If we take a gamble, at least we have something to rely on.

Technology sharing is technology sharing, but the technology of optical devices is not so easy to break through. Even if we break down the manufacturing process and tell the Chinese people without hiding anything,

There is still a lot to be done in terms of technology, and we can set obstacles for the Chinese in terms of precision.

This is the best outcome we could have negotiated.”

For a high-tech industry like chips, there is no doubt that technology determines too many things.

With the same lithography machine, TSMC's process yield rate is higher than that of SMIC. With the same ASML lithography machine, TSMC can produce 3nm chips in the first time, while Intel has repeatedly delayed its delivery.

The most valuable thing about TSMC is this group of engineers. They decided that 4V has produced 92% of the world's most advanced semiconductors in the past decade, which is a very exaggerated proportion.

"Also, Mr. Morita, you have a very important mission, which is our cooperation with China, and we need to invite Mr. Junji Tominaga.

We will set up a brand new company in China. This company will not have any apparent relationship with Nikon. We need someone who is professional enough to be responsible for the operation of this new company.

Mr. Junji Tominaga is probably the person who knows the most about topological semimetals in Japan." Decheng concluded.

Morita Mahiro, the president of Nikon's semiconductor business unit, thought about it for a long time, but he still couldn't remember who Tominaga was.

"President, I will definitely complete the task you assign to me, but a name alone may not be enough," said Morita.

"Junji Tominaga, a distinguished senior researcher at the Device Technology Research Division of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, this guy was the lead researcher ten years ago."

It was the first time Morita heard that there was someone who could work his way up from chief researcher to senior researcher, so how come he was getting lower and lower?

This is definitely a rare thing in Japan, where seniority is extremely important and the hierarchy is strict. Morita was full of doubts and planned to go back to see who this person is.

It can make Decheng admire it so much, but it can also be demoted. "Morning, Tominaga-kun."

"Morning, Tominaga-kun."

Junji Tominaga looked at his colleagues who greeted him and responded one by one, then went to his office as usual.

His job this year has not changed, which is to figure out how the Chinese are able to produce topological semimetals that can be used on chips.

After graduating with a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield in England, he joined the Institute of Industrial Technology. He began researching topological semimetals during his doctoral studies and can be said to have dedicated his entire academic career to this.

Topological semimetal is a very new concept now. It was already updated fifteen years ago when he just joined the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

At that time, topological semimetals only existed in theory. Scientists believed that such a thing existed based on quantum field theory and the mathematical concept of Weyl spinor.

But no one knows whether it exists or not, because no one has ever created it.

People have always joked that quantum mechanics is the only thing that matters, and it is true. Although this thing exists in theory, no one dares to say it exists before it is created. What if the theory is patched and this thing disappears again?

It means that you invest your time in this, only to have it falsified in the end, wasting several years of your precious academic life.

For this reason, there were very few people working on topological semimetals in that era, and even fewer in Japan. Tominaga was considered one of the pioneers in this field in the Japanese academic community.

And he lived up to expectations and successfully created topological semimetal in 2015, although it was first reported on Wikipedia that it was created by Princeton and published in Science in July of that year.

But judging from the report on Tominaga in the 15th issue of Neon Technology Space magazine in 8, he created topological semimetal almost at the same time, and caused a sensation in the physics community in Neon.

"Morita-kun, from Nikon, Nikon, I seem to have some impression of him." Tominaga looked at the business card placed on the assistant's desk, guessing the other party's purpose.

He guessed that it must be related to topological semimetals. To be more precise, many Japanese semiconductor manufacturers came to him, hoping to fund his project.

The industrialized mass production of topological semimetals in China has led to a surge in research related to topological semimetals. In a sense, in the first half of this year abroad, as long as your previous research direction was somewhat related to topological semimetals, you could easily ask companies for money.

Tominaga heard from his American colleagues that they could easily get a lot of dollars, and two million dollars was the starting price.

Before, everyone could only struggle to obtain federal funding or internal research funds in universities.

In the sub-field, topological semimetals and room-temperature superconductors belong to the field of condensed matter physics. To compete for research funds, one has to compete with materials. Even in America, being able to apply for $15 is already a small-time level.

Generally, the Mavericks apply for four to five projects a year, with each project costing more than $15, which means about $60 in research funding, enough for them to live a very comfortable life.

But now Chen Yuanguang has completely broken the original order. He can easily get 200 million US dollars in research funds for topological semimetals. This has led to a large number of scholars who originally worked on materials recruiting a few students studying condensed matter physics and rushing into the direction of topological semimetals, regardless of how much they know.

It's alchemy anyway. If I can refine the gold from materials science, why can't I refine your condensed gold?

Everyone holds a similar idea. In such an environment, for Chinese students, who are top-notch students with scientific research experience and condensed matter physics, it is easy to apply to US50 universities. As long as you apply, you can get an offer, at least a half-scholarship.

If you are a master's degree holder in condensed matter physics from a C9 university and can apply for a PhD at MIT, MIT's PhD offers are wholesale.

If you have interned in a light armor company, I'm sorry, but NVIDIA and Intel will send you an offer directly, and even enroll you in an English tutoring class, so that you can learn English and work at the same time after coming to Silicon Valley.

In this environment, American's Japanese colleagues strongly advised Tominaga to go to American, "Mr. Tominaga, with your qualifications, it's easy for you to join giants like Intel and Nvidia. They are willing to offer you an annual salary of at least over two million US dollars.

If converted into Japanese yen, it would be more than 300 million yen.

Why stay in that corrupt country? They won't realize the importance of your scientific research results anyway."

The reason why Tominaga is so important is that for China, which has already mass-produced topological semi-metallic chips, Tominaga's value is limited, but for these European and American semiconductor giants who have not even touched the edge, Tominaga's rich experience is absolutely an invaluable asset.

Because he is not just simply studying topological semimetals, but has been studying how superlattices can be applied to semiconductors. In other words, he has been committed to studying how topological semimetals can be applied in the semiconductor field, and has made Nobel Prize-level achievements in the past.

(End of this chapter)