PDLP Chapter 173 Hongyuan
Chapter 173 Hongyuan
2020 11 Month 24 Day.
Chang'an Town, Dongguan. Industrial Zone.
Lin Wei's car stopped in front of a gray factory building. The factory wasn't large, about two thousand square meters, and the sign at the entrance read "Dongguan Hongyuan Precision Electronics Co., Ltd." The sign was a bit old, and the paint in the lower right corner had started to peel off.
Zhao Ming got out of the passenger seat, glanced at the unassuming factory building, and muttered, "This is it."
Lin Wei nodded and opened the car door.
The factory gate was open, and the hum of machines could be heard from inside. A man in gray overalls with gray hair walked out—he was in his fifties, not very tall, but his steps were steady.
"President Lin?" He extended his hand. "I'm Chen Jianguo."
"Mr. Chen." Lin Wei shook hands with him.
Chen Jianguo's hands are rough, with an old burn scar on his knuckles—a mark left twenty years ago in the packaging workshop. He has a technical background, having worked for fifteen years in a Taiwanese-owned packaging factory, rising from operator to process supervisor. In 2015, he started his own business, using his life savings and two partners to raise 300 million yuan to open Hongyuan Precision.
Five years. From 300 million to 50 MEMS packages per month, with annual revenue of approximately 2000 million. In Dongguan's electronics manufacturing industry, this is not a remarkable achievement. But what Chen Jianguo is most proud of is not revenue—but precision.
Hongyuan Precision ranks among the top five in the country in terms of MEMS packaging precision.
"Please come in." Chen Jianguo led Lin Wei and Zhao Ming into the factory.
The factory interior was much cleaner than the exterior. Although the equipment wasn't new, every machine was spotless, and there was no clutter on the floor. Several handwritten process parameter sheets were posted on the walls, the handwriting neat and clearly written by Chen Jianguo himself.
"This is our main production line," Chen Jianguo said, pointing to a row of equipment. "Four semi-automatic wire bonding machines, two molding and packaging machines, and one AOI optical inspection system. Monthly production capacity is 50 units."
Lin Wei looked around: "What's the yield rate?"
"For standard MEMS packaging, it's over 96%. For flight controller-grade sensors—like six-axis inertial sensors with ±0.01 degree accuracy—it's around 93%."
"This is significantly higher than the 87% that Zhao Ming told me."
Chen Jianguo glanced at Zhao Ming and smiled somewhat sheepishly: "Last month, we improved a temperature control system for our molding process. The yield rate increased from 87% to 93%. I was planning to tell Mr. Zhao about it, but I haven't had a chance yet."
Zhao Ming raised an eyebrow. The yield rate had increased by six percentage points within a month—a remarkable improvement in the MEMS packaging field.
Lin Wei's eyes lit up slightly, but she didn't show it.
"Let's go to the conference room to talk," Chen Jianguo said.
……
The meeting room was small. There was a rectangular table and six chairs. On the table were a pot of hot tea and several paper cups.
Chen Jianguo's two partners were already waiting.
One of them, Wang Zhigang, is in his forties and is in charge of sales and customer relations. He previously worked in Huawei's supply chain department.
One of them, Li Weiping, was in his early fifties and was in charge of equipment procurement and supplier management. He had previously worked with Chen Jianguo at the same Taiwanese-owned packaging factory.
Three people. This is the entire management team of Hongyuan Precision.
Lin Wei sat down and got straight to the point:
"陈总，我的提议你们应该已经看过了。鸿远飞鸟投资3000万，获得宏远精密70%的股权。你们三位的股权从100%稀释到30%，但公司估值从目前的1000万提升到4300万。此外——"
She paused for a moment:
"Furthermore, Hongyuan Feiniao will provide a three-year MEMS packaging order agreement. The first year will see a monthly order volume of 100 million units, increasing to 200 million units in the second year depending on production capacity, and 300 million units in the third year. The price will be settled at 95% of the market price—more stable than any order you've received so far."
The meeting room was silent for a few seconds.
Wang Zhigang was the first to speak: "President Lin, isn't a 3000 million investment for 70% equity too high? Although our company is small, our technology is truly solid. A 93% yield rate for flight control-grade packaging is something that no more than four companies in China can achieve."
"You're right," Lin Wei nodded. "That's why my valuation is 4300 million, not 1000 million. This premium fully reflects the value of your technology."
"But a 70% stake means we've completely lost control." Wang Zhigang glanced at Chen Jianguo. "Mr. Chen, we started this business precisely because we didn't want to be controlled by a large company. Now we're going to sell ourselves to one?"
Li Weiping remained silent. He kept looking at the contract that Lin Wei had brought.
Chen Jianguo picked up his teacup, took a sip, and then put it down.
"Zhigang, you're right. We really don't want to be controlled by others when we start our own business. But think about it—what's our current bottleneck?"
Wang Zhigang paused for a moment.
"Production capacity," he said.
"Yes. Production capacity." Chen Jianguo's voice was calm. "Our yield rate can reach 93%—I'm very proud of that number. But our monthly production capacity is only 50 units. Do you know why only 50 units? Because we can't afford to buy more equipment."
How much does a fully automatic wire bonding machine cost? 300 million. How much does an advanced molding and packaging machine cost? 500 million. How much does a complete AOI inspection system cost? 200 million.
We started with 300 million yuan, and now we've only accumulated about 500 million yuan in cash flow. Buying a fully automatic wire bonding machine took up more than half a year's profits.
That's why our production capacity has remained stagnant. It's not because we don't want to, it's because we don't have the money.
Wang Zhigang's lips moved, but he didn't speak.
Chen Jianguo continued:
"What does 3000 million mean? It's our company's total revenue over three years. With this money, we can buy six to eight fully automated machines and increase our monthly production capacity from 50 units to over 200 million units."
More importantly—Hongyuan Feiniao gave us more than just money. They gave us orders. Three-year long-term orders. As someone in sales, you should know better than me what stable, long-term orders mean for a small company.
Wang Zhigang fell silent.
He knew better than anyone else. Most of Hongyuan Precision's current clients are small consumer electronics manufacturers with unstable orders; sometimes their production lines are at full capacity one month, but idle the next. This uncertainty is a small company's biggest nightmare.
A three-year long-term order—starting at 100 million units per month—not only solved the production capacity problem, but also the survival problem.
"There's one more thing." Chen Jianguo glanced at Lin Wei. "President Lin, what does it mean that you wrote in the contract—'The founding team continues to be fully responsible for daily operations and technical management'?"
Lin Wei said, "Literally. Hongyuan Feiniao is a financial investor, not a manager. You manage your workshops, you determine your processes. We only have a say in two areas—capital budgeting and strategic direction. I don't interfere with day-to-day operations."
"Why?" Chen Jianguo asked.
"Because you have more experience in the MEMS packaging field than any of us," Lin Wei said. "My investment in you is an investment in your capabilities, not an attempt to replace them."
Chen Jianguo looked at Lin Wei and remained silent for a few seconds.
Then he turned to Li Weiping and asked, "Old Li, what's your opinion?"
Li Weiping finally looked up from the contract. He adjusted his reading glasses:
"I read the contract twice. The terms are very clear, with no hidden traps. One clause is worth noting—there's a 'priority supply clause' in the contract. This means that, given limited production capacity, Hongyuan Feiniao's orders take precedence over other customers."
He glanced at Lin Wei: "President Lin, is this clause related to MicroPort Sensors' acquisition by Bosch?"
Lin Wei's expression remained unchanged: "This is a normal business practice for Hongyuan Feiniao in perfecting its supply chain layout."
Li Weiping smiled slightly. Having worked in the supply chain industry for over twenty years, he naturally understood the meaning behind those words.
"I agree," Li Weiping said.
Wang Zhigang glanced at Chen Jianguo, then at Li Weiping, and finally sighed.
"Alright. I agree. But there's one condition—President Chen must continue to oversee the technology. At all times and under all circumstances, Hongyuan Precision's packaging process must be decided by President Chen. This must be written into the contract."
"It's already written," Lin Wei said.
Wang Zhigang paused for a moment, then flipped open the contract and found that clause.
It has indeed been written.
"...You guys prepared this in advance?" Wang Zhigang was both amused and exasperated.
"Because we conducted due diligence," Lin Wei said calmly. "I know that Hongyuan Precision's biggest asset isn't its equipment or factory buildings, but Chen Jianguo himself. So we included that clause in the contract."
Chen Jianguo lowered his head, picked up his teacup, and took another sip. When he put the cup down, there was a barely perceptible moisture in the corner of his eye.
Having worked in the packaging industry for twenty years, from an operator in a Taiwanese-owned factory to starting his own business, no one has ever told him, "You yourself are the company's greatest asset."
"Then let's sign it," Chen Jianguo said.
……
The signing ceremony was simple. Three people signed: Lin Wei signed, and Zhao Ming signed as a witness. There was no champagne, no group photo, and no press release.
As they left the factory, Lin Wei told Zhao Ming, "Arrange for two engineers to come and be stationed on-site tomorrow. The goal is to increase the yield rate of flight control-grade packaging from 93% to over 96% within two months. At the same time, start purchasing equipment—order two fully automatic wire bonding machines and one molding packaging machine. They should arrive before the Spring Festival."
"clear."
"Furthermore—regarding the investment in Hongyuan Precision, they only publicly describe it as a 'strategic investment.' They don't mention specific figures for packaging capacity, expansion plans, or the supply relationship with Hongyuan Feibiao."
Why?
"It's the same reason as building our own packaging line. If Bosch knew we were rapidly increasing production capacity, they would tighten the supply to MicroPort Sensors even faster. We need time."
Zhao Ming nodded.
Lin Wei got into the car and glanced at the gray factory building in the rearview mirror.
Small and inconspicuous. But she knew that the gray-haired man in that factory held in his hands not only a monthly production capacity of 50 units—but also Hongyuan Flying Bird's lifeline for the first half of 2021.
Short-term solution: Hongyuan Precision expands its production capacity to 200 million units per month, replacing 30% of the shortfall in MicroPort Sensors.
Long-term plan – Nanshan District will build its own packaging line with a monthly output of 3 million units, and trial production will begin before May 2021.
Two roads, travel them simultaneously.
……
On the morning of the same day, in the DRIE laboratory on the third floor of Hungyuan Flying Bird's headquarters, another conversation concerning the fate of Hungyuan Flying Bird was taking place.
Su Chen sat at the lab bench. Opposite him sat a man in his thirties—tall and thin, wearing metal-framed glasses and a faded plaid shirt.
Zhou Zhiyuan. Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. 34 years old. After graduating with his doctorate, he conducted research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences for six years, publishing more than 40 papers, three of which have been cited more than 200 times—a remarkable achievement in the domestic mechanics community.
He flew in from Beijing this morning. Lin Wei arranged the flight yesterday.
"Su Chen, to be honest, I was quite surprised when you called me." Zhou Zhiyuan adjusted his glasses. "Ever since our last live stream together, I've been looking for an opportunity to talk to you in person, but I didn't expect you to contact me first."
"It's because of your paper." Su Chen spread the seven sheets of draft paper from yesterday on the lab bench.
Zhou Zhiyuan looked down at the draft papers, his eyes widening.
He saw the expansion of the Green's function in cylindrical coordinates. He saw the physical origin analysis of the third-order nonlinear coupling terms. He saw his own invented regularization method used in the third-order correction under the von Neumann boundary condition.
I saw the equation in the last line:
$Deltatheta_{300} = theta_0 + sum_{n=1}^{3} c_n cdot R_n(r,theta,z) + O(10^{-5})$
Zhou Zhiyuan remained silent for a long time.
"You used my regularization method to solve the convergence problem of the third-order expansion of the Green's function under the Neumann boundary condition." His voice trembled slightly.
"Yes. I thought I'd use the regularization method in your 2018 paper when I read it in the library. I didn't expect it to come so soon."
"So fast?" Zhou Zhiyuan gave a wry smile. "Your 'so fast' is two and a half years."
"Two and a half years isn't a long time. Good methods never go out of style," Su Chen said.
Zhou Zhiyuan looked at the draft papers again, then looked up:
"Su Chen, do you know what you've done?"
"Third-order correction of the temperature field in a 300mm MEMS cavity."
"No." Zhou Zhiyuan shook his head. "What you're doing isn't an engineering correction. What you're doing is—establishing a completely new theory of MEMS etching thermodynamics."
The equivalent thermoelastic approximation method forms the basic framework. The parameter calibration at 250mm is the first application. The third-order correction at 300mm is the second. However, the applicability of your method extends far beyond this.
If your framework is correct—and I'm 90% certain it is—then it can be extended to 400mm, 500mm, and even larger sizes. Not just MEMS. Any field involving large-scale anisotropic etching—semiconductor manufacturing, photovoltaic wafer dicing, microfluidic chips—can use your framework.
Su Chen, this isn't about a single paper. It's about a whole academic discipline.
Su Chen remained silent for a few seconds.
"Perhaps," he said, "but now I need to solve a very specific problem—parameter calibration at 300mm. My theoretical framework is in place, but I need a trial etching experiment to verify the prediction accuracy of the third-order modified model."
I would like to ask for your help in optimizing the computational efficiency of the regularization method in practical calibration. Your method is theoretically perfect, but in engineering applications, the computational cost is too high. A single parameter calibration requires numerically solving the complete expansion of the third-order Green's function—which takes approximately 72 hours on our computing equipment.
I hope you can help me find a simplified method to reduce the computation time to less than 12 hours.
Zhou Zhiyuan thought for a moment: "Within 12 hours... this means we need to truncate the third-order expansion to a certain precision. If the truncation error is controlled within 10 to the power of -5..."
He picked up a pen and began to write next to Su Chen's draft paper.
Su Chen looked at Zhou Zhiyuan's handwriting—neat, precise, and with an academic style. It was completely different from his own messy style.
But the direction is the same.
The two sat side by side at the lab bench, each working on their own derivations on scratch paper. Occasionally, they would exchange a few words—"This integral substitution can be simplified," "The asymptotic expansion here can be done using the Laplace method," "The contribution of the boundary terms can be ignored above the fourth order."
The sunlight outside the window shifted from the morning to the afternoon.
Shen Zhiming delivered takeout twice. Neither of them ate the first time. The second time, Su Chen took two bites and put it down. Zhou Zhiyuan, on the other hand, finished it all—he cherished food more than Su Chen, probably because the salary of an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences was indeed not high.
At 4:30 p.m., Zhou Zhiyuan put down his pen.
"I have an idea," he said.
Su Chen looked up at him.
"The reason your third-order Green's function expansion is computationally intensive is that, under the von Neumann boundary conditions, each order of the Green's function involves the summation of an infinite series. Although my regularization method guarantees convergence, the convergence speed of the series is very slow—it takes about the first 200 terms to achieve an accuracy of 10 to the power of -5."
However, if we change our approach—instead of directly calculating the series, we utilize the symmetry property of the Green's function—specifically, its angular symmetry in cylindrical coordinates—we can reduce the summation of a three-dimensional series to a one-dimensional one.
This reduces the computational workload to about one-eighth of the original amount. 72 hours becomes 9 hours.
"Nine hours." Su Chen repeated.
"Hmm. It's 3 hours less than the 12 hours you requested."
Su Chen's lips curled up slightly.
"Zhou Zhiyuan," he said.
"Um?"
Would you like to join Hongyuan Flying Bird?
Zhou Zhiyuan was stunned for a moment.
"I'm not asking you to resign," Su Chen said. "You can keep your position at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I'm saying—would you be willing to serve as a technical advisor for Hongyuan Feiniao, participating in the verification of the 300mm and subsequent theoretical research?"
You can discuss the compensation with Lin Wei. But I guarantee—what you do here will be more meaningful than the papers you write at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zhou Zhiyuan looked at Su Chen.
Three years ago, he first saw the name "Su Chen" in the citation list of a paper—at that time, Su Chen was just an unknown researcher who had published a preprint on arXiv. Zhou Zhiyuan read the preprint at the time, thought the idea was unique but the argumentation was rough, and didn't pay much attention to it.
Two years later, the "equivalent thermoelastic approximation method" emerged. Zhou Zhiyuan reread the preprint and found that Su Chen had developed the core ideas into a complete theoretical framework—far more profound than he had initially imagined.
Then there's 250mm at 12.03 degrees.
Then there's today—the third-order revision on seven sheets of draft paper.
Zhou Zhiyuan glanced down at the pile of draft papers on the lab table. The two men's handwritings intertwined—Su Chen's messy handwriting and his neat handwriting, like two different rivers merging on the same piece of paper.
"I'll think about it," he said.
"good."
"But today's derivation—" Zhou Zhiyuan adjusted his glasses, "I want to finish the calculation. The dimensionality reduction method based on angular symmetry still needs to be verified for several boundary cases."
Su Chen nodded and picked up his pen again.
The two continued writing on the draft paper.
The sunlight outside the window gradually began to slant westward.
……
Nine o'clock in the evening.
Zhou Zhiyuan left the headquarters of Hongyuan Flying Bird. Lin Wei arranged for a car to take him to the hotel.
Su Chen sat alone in the laboratory, with eleven sheets of draft paper spread out in front of him—seven of them were his own, and four were the ones he had written with Zhou Zhiyuan that day.
Eleven pages. From theoretical framework to computational simplification, from third-order correction to dimensionality reduction methods.
He stood up and walked to the window. The night view of Nanshan District in Shenzhen unfolded outside the window—a myriad of lights and a constant flow of traffic.
My phone lit up. It was a WeChat message from Zhou Zhiyuan.
"Su Chen, I took today's derivation back to the hotel and reviewed it again. The angular symmetry dimensionality reduction method converges in all boundary cases. The 9-hour estimate is conservative—with further optimization of the numerical integration scheme, it might be possible to reduce it to 6 hours."
Su Chen replied: "6 hours. That's enough."
Then he typed another line: "Are you free tomorrow? I'd like to discuss the design of the etching experiment with you."
Zhou Zhiyuan's reply came almost instantly:
"I changed my flight back to Beijing to the day after tomorrow. I'm free all day tomorrow."
Su Chen stared at the message and remained silent for a few seconds.
Then he opened his chat window with Lin Wei and sent her a message:
"Zhou Zhiyuan will stay another day tomorrow. Please book his flight back to Beijing the day after tomorrow. Also—if possible, arrange a technical consultant appointment for him. You can set the terms."
Lin Wei replied instantly: "I'm all ready."
Su Chen smiled.
How did you know I would invite him?
"Because you never reach out to people. The fact that you reach out to him means you need him. And you don't need someone for just one day."
Su Chen thought for a moment and replied with two words: "A true friend."
Lin Wei replied with a smiling emoji.
Su Chen turned off his phone screen and returned to the lab bench. He tidied up the eleven sheets of draft paper and put them in the drawer—along with the previous thirteen.
Twenty-four sheets of draft paper.
From the equivalent thermoelastic approximation method to the regularized Green's function correction, and then to angular symmetry dimensionality reduction.
From one person to two people.
On the road from 250mm to 300mm, Su Chen had a true companion for the first time.
He turned off the lights and walked out of the laboratory.
As he reached the top of the stairs, he glanced back at the dark laboratory. Moonlight streamed in through the window, falling on the empty lab table.
Zhou Zhiyuan will come again tomorrow. He will fly back to Beijing the day after tomorrow. But Su Chen knows he will return.
Because some things, once started, can't be stopped.
That's how it is at 300mm.
The same applies to connections between people.