Chapter 886: Integration of millions of carbon nanotubes
New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve. The lights are brightly lit and the atmosphere is full of joy.
Bright red lanterns hang under the eaves, the sound of firecrackers and laughter interweave in the air, which is the unique melody of the New Year.
After the reunion dinner, the family sat in the living room and watched the Spring Festival Gala, which was boring but seemed to be missing something.
Xu Chuan casually grabbed a handful of melon seeds from the snack plate on the table, knocked two of them, looked at Xu Xiao who was playing on his mobile phone, and asked:
"Speaking of which, how is your research work on brain-computer interfaces and biochips going now?"
Xu Xiao put down her phone and sighed with some annoyance: "We are preparing to conduct clinical trials. The reply there is that the earliest approval for qualifications may not be until March or April of the new year."
"If it's slow, I don't know how long it will take."
A clinical trial is a scientific study in which researchers investigate the effects of a drug or device on a disease or an individual's overall health.
There are generally two types, one is a patient trial and the other is a healthy person trial.
In China, no matter what kind it is, human clinical trials in medicine have always been very strict and difficult to apply for.
Most of those qualified to do projects of this level are top tertiary hospitals.
The brain-computer interface company in Xu Xiao's hands can apply for medical human clinical trials. On the one hand, the company's size is there.
It is a company worth nearly RMB 30 billion, and it is in the cutting-edge science and technology field of brain-computer interface. It can be said to be top-notch in terms of size in the country.
Even the previous joint research between Mizuki and the McGovern Institute for Brain Science at MIT was not on this scale.
On the other hand, it is naturally the influence of her brother Xu Chuan.
It is precisely because of this that Xu Xiao was able to apply for human clinical trials in December of the second half of this year, and he will almost be able to get the license around March next year.
In three months, for the domestic human clinical trial review system, it was almost stuck in the standards.
However, Xu Xiao is not very clear about these things, and she may not be able to obtain clinical trial qualifications in three months, which worries her very much.
Xu Chuan smiled and said: "Since the Supervision and Administration Bureau has given you a reply, just wait. Three months is not a long time. It is better to be strict in medicine."
"Don't forget, the technology you are researching now is to cure diseases and save lives."
"The impact of brain-neural interface on the human body must be carried out through detailed experiments to ensure that there are no problems before it can be applied to the human body."
"Do you understand?"
The process of human clinical trials is actually not only strict in China, but also in most countries.
Of course, except Ah San.
The review of medical clinical trials in that place is unprecedentedly bad.
For example, in 2008, Asan's official media exposed a scandal, causing an uproar and simply setting the lower limit of human civilization.
The All India Medical Sciences Center in New Delhi is well-known in the pharmaceutical industry and has long provided low-cost services to the public. Many medical students are proud to receive training here.
But the fact is that since January 2006, this center has secretly cooperated with at least five European and American pharmaceutical companies. In order to conduct the final stage testing of a drug, it actually arranged for 4142 babies to participate in 42 clinical trials.
To make matters worse, many parents of infants complained that their children were not seriously ill.
The child went to see a doctor because he had some minor illnesses, but the doctor arranged for him to be hospitalized for a long time because the problem was serious. What they never dreamed of was that the child was sent for an experiment.
These clinical trials lasted 30 months.
Of these babies, 2,728 were under 1 year old.
As a result, it was reported that a full 49 infants died after drug trials.
It is unknown how many infants and young children died or suffered serious sequelae during the drug trial.
Also, from 2005 to 2012, among the 475 trial drug projects in Asan, only 17 new drugs passed inspection.
Over the past seven years, approximately 570,000 people have participated in clinical drug trials, and 2,644 people have died as a result of the trial drugs.
In addition, there have been more than 120,000 accidents caused by side effects of new drugs.
This is just the information reported by Asan Daily, and it is just the tip of the iceberg of Asan’s pharmaceutical industry.
Such cruel medical experiments are inseparable from Ah San's extremely lax clinical experiments.
Generally speaking, it takes about twelve years for a new drug to be launched; these are three major steps: research and development, animal testing, and clinical trials.
The final clinical trial is divided into three phases and will take approximately six to seven years.
In most countries, countless experiments and animal tests are required before the development of clinical medicines and final clinical trials on humans.
But in Asan, animal testing can be bypassed for many ‘drugs’ or ‘medical equipment’.
To put it simply, it means doing less, or using bionic organ simulation instead, or even not doing it at all.
No matter which country these drugs are developed in, and no matter what the previous testing standards are, as long as they can meet the first-phase clinical trial standards, they can be tested in human clinical trials in Asan.
To put it bluntly, Ah San agreed to the world's pharmaceutical giants conducting "human experiments" in India.
In exchange, Asan's "patent invalidation right" is granted by Asan in the pharmaceutical industry, that is, as long as the preparation steps of generic drugs are changed casually, there is no need to pay patent fees.
Whether it is good or bad is difficult to evaluate.
‘Loose’ regulations on human experimentation have caused countless ordinary people to suffer from difficult illnesses and even die from them.
But on the contrary, as a superpower with a population of more than one billion, this system has also brought a large number of generic drugs to the extremely poor ordinary people in Asan, saving more people from being unable to afford medicine after falling ill.
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As for China, in the beginning it was actually similar to Asan.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Not only does Asan have "special national patent rights", but it also existed in China in the last century.
But China has taken a completely opposite path and established a more complete medical system.
Xu Xiao's brain nerve interface chip and related technologies must pass domestic medical system review and human clinical trials before they can be released.
...
New Year's Eve is here, and the Spring Festival is approaching.
The fireworks at midnight are more dazzling than the stars in the sky.
After visiting the relatives at his grandmother's house in the second year of junior high school, Xu Chuan had a lot of free time.
Although people would send him prestige calls every day to say New Year greetings and so on, for him, most of these things were of the type that he could or could not return.
Taking advantage of his free time during the Spring Festival, Xu Chuan took out his computer from his backpack.
If you are idle, you are idle, so why not make arrangements for the next work on carbon-based chips?
Turning on the computer, Xu Chuan casually created a new document on the desktop. After pondering for a while, Xu Chuan wrote the title of the document.
"Recommendations on the rapid completion of research and industrial production of carbon-based chips"
Looking at the title in front of him, Xu Chuan thought for a while and then added the words (first draft) after the title.
Before I came back from the New Year last year, research on carbon-based chips had made some breakthroughs, at least in the area of carbon nanotube integration.
This was simulated after he personally led people to study the 'Yaochi Crystal'.
During the Spring Festival, researchers at Xinghai Research Institute and Materials Research Institute have been following his research direction and continuing to advance this matter.
Although the entire institute will be on holiday during the Spring Festival, it does not mean that no one will be left.
For large research institutions with tens of thousands of people, even during the Chinese New Year, many managers and researchers will stay and work overtime to maintain the operation of the institute.
Carbon-based chips are currently the focus of the Materials Research Institute.
This is a road that is wider and more difficult to walk than silicon-based chips. Now that we have seen a glimmer of hope, how can we not stimulate the researchers in the institute.
And for the Materials Research Institute, this is their first internal S-level project.
If festivals like the Spring Festival were not of great significance to Chinese people, most researchers in the project team might choose to stay and work overtime.
In just the past few days, the Materials Research Institute has made a major breakthrough in the integration of carbon nanotubes on carbon-based chips.
The number of integrated carbon nanotubes in an area of one square millimeter has exceeded one million for the first time, and with every experimental study and technical optimization, this number is still rising rapidly.
According to estimates from the Institute of Materials, they hope to be able to create a carbon-based substrate integrating tens of millions of carbon nanotubes before the 10th of January.
Although this is only a carbon-based substrate, not a real carbon-based chip, and there is still a long way to go before the integration density of silicon-based chips exceeds 200 million transistors per square millimeter.
But for the research on carbon-based chips, this is undoubtedly a major breakthrough.
You know, before this, the number of carbon-based chip transistors was only a few thousand, and they were integrated in the laboratory at a huge cost.
Now, through a simpler and cheaper method, they can easily achieve the orderly integration of millions of carbon nanotubes on a carbon-based substrate.
This is what scientific research is like. If you don't find the right research direction, then your progress will be like groping in the fog of chaos.
But if you find a correct research direction and make rapid progress, it will be like embarking on a broad road.
.......
After celebrating the Spring Festival, visiting relatives, and staying at home until the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, Xu Chuan was ready to leave for Jinling.
Compared with previous years when he would almost have to celebrate the 12th day of the New Year or even the Lantern Festival before setting off, this year he did leave a little earlier.
Mainly focusing on research on carbon-based chips.
The 'Yaochi crystal' discovered on the impact wall of the Yaochi crater on the far side of the moon has brought a major breakthrough to the research of carbon-based chips.
The problem of orderly arrangement of carbon nanotubes has been solved to the greatest extent. What is left is undoubtedly to seize the time and develop a real carbon-based integrated chip.
To be honest, Xu Chuan can't do much in the research of carbon-based chips.
On the one hand, he is not a scholar in the chip field and has little understanding of this field.
On the other hand, the research and preparation of chips is a systematic super project.
Strictly speaking, the preparation of the chip is similar to the controllable nuclear fusion project he presided over.
Both are made up of ‘blocks’.
Just like building blocks, use tools to shape the blocks into the desired shape and then assemble them together to form a house.
For example, the research and development and preparation of chips involves multiple steps and processes such as circuit diagram planning and design, manufacturing single-crystal silicon wafers, thin film deposition, photolithography machine exposure, etching and plasma injection...finished product packaging, etc.
Every step and every process needs to solve many problems.
For example, the design of a circuit diagram is related to functional requirements, circuit topology, signal transmission speed and other factors.
The manufacturing of single crystal silicon wafers also involves the preparation of ultra-high-purity single crystal silicon, ultra-smooth cutting surfaces and other problems.
Not to mention controllable nuclear fusion technology.
Whether it is the control of high-temperature plasma turbulence, the first wall material, or the recovery of tritium, they are the top and most difficult problems in the world.
If you want to talk about differences, of course there are still some.
The development and manufacturing of chips will not be more difficult than controllable nuclear fusion technology.
Because it is already a path taken by Western countries, and until the controllable nuclear fusion technology is officially completed in Xuchuan, there will be no road ahead.
However, compared with controllable nuclear fusion technology, the research and development and preparation of chips are more complex and systematic and comprehensive.
Because it requires a complete system that involves almost all industrial systems.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! The EUV extreme ultraviolet lithography machine produced by ASML has parts from many countries such as the European Union, East Asia, and North America.
In this regard, not to mention the windmill country that controls ASML, even the United States does not have the ability to produce the most advanced low-nanometer chips on its own.
The only country in the world that has this industrial system and capability is China.
But the flaw of China is that it has a complete industrial system, but some of the fields involved are still a long way from being top-notch.
For example, the technology for preparing ultra-high-purity single crystal silicon ingots is currently mastered by only a handful of countries such as Sakura Country, the United States, and Germany.
The ultra-smooth lenses used in EUV extreme ultraviolet lithography machines can only be provided by the German company Zeiss.
Therefore, strictly speaking, if China wants to complete the research and development of chips on its own, it is tantamount to using the power of one country to challenge the joint research results of Western countries around the world in the past few decades.
It is normal to have difficulty breaking through.
But now, another, more spacious track is just around the corner.
...
Carrying his backpack, he pushed open the office door.
In the assistant room, Tang Ran had already come to work early.
Seeing Xu Chuan, she stood up with a smile and said hello happily: "Professor, Happy New Year. Why don't you rest at home for a few more days."
"Happy New Year."
Xu Chuan smiled and nodded, said hello and said, "I think so too, but the work here is more important."
After a slight pause, he then said: "Since you are here, please help me handle something."
"Professor, please tell me." Tang Ran replied quickly.
Xu Chuan: "Help me collect information on major domestic manufacturers that are researching silicon-based chips and carbon-based chips. Also, help me make an appointment with Mr. Lei of Xiaomi Group and ask him when is convenient. I want to meet him."
Hearing Xu Chuan's request, Tang Ran didn't think much and quickly replied: "Okay, Professor, is there anything else?"
"No, just sort out the information and give it to me as soon as possible."