UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 42 of 149

Correct — B, It complements the Government’s Samudrayan mission.

The stem asks which statement is incorrect, so B is the option to mark, and the statement inside it is the one that does not hold.

A nano-fabrication facility is a cleanroom for building structures measured in nanometres — lithography to pattern a wafer, thin-film deposition to lay material down, etching to cut it away. Its output is solid-state structures on a substrate.

Samudrayan is India's manned deep-ocean programme: a crewed submersible meant to take people down to the seabed, run under the Deep Ocean Mission by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. Its engineering problem is pressure hulls and life support, not wafers.

The other three options each name a programme that does depend on nanoscale device making, so B is the pairing that fails. The idea to carry away: a cleanroom feeds the missions that need nanoscale devices — chips, nanomaterials, quantum hardware.

• (a)
  It complements the Government’s semiconductor mission. — This statement holds, so it is not the one the stem is hunting for. Chip making is nano-fabrication: transistor features on a modern die are patterned at the nanometre scale, and a research cleanroom is exactly the asset a national chip programme wants.

  It is the statement you would pick for a question asking which programme such a facility most directly serves — the India Semiconductor Mission, the MeitY body running the Semicon India programme, whose remit includes research, design and skilling.

• (c)
  It complements the Government’s Nano mission. — Also true, and close to definitional. Fabrication at the nanometre scale is the subject matter of the nanoscience programme itself, and a cleanroom is the shared infrastructure such a programme is meant to create.

  The programme this statement points to is the Nano Mission of the Department of Science and Technology, launched in 2007 and preceded by the Nano Science and Technology Initiative begun in 2001.

• (d)
  It supports research in the quantum mission. — This holds too. Solid-state qubits, photonic chips and single-photon detectors are made by the same lithography, deposition and etching steps, so quantum hardware work depends on cleanroom access.

  The programme behind it is the National Quantum Mission, approved by the Union Cabinet in April 2023 and implemented by the Department of Science and Technology, one of whose thematic areas is quantum materials and devices.

Nano-fabrication is the set of cleanroom techniques for making and patterning structures from a few nanometres to a few hundred nanometres across: photolithography or electron-beam lithography to draw the pattern, thin-film deposition to add material, etching to remove it, and electron microscopy to inspect the result.

Because that toolchain is generic, one facility can serve several fields at once. A test chip, a nanomaterial structure and a superconducting qubit are different devices built on the same equipment.

• Samudrayan is India's manned deep-ocean mission, pursued under the Deep Ocean Mission of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
• The Samudrayan submersible, Matsya-6000, is being developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai.
• Matsya-6000 is designed to carry three people to a depth of 6,000 metres.
• The India Semiconductor Mission functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as a division of Digital India Corporation.
• The Semicon India programme was approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 with an outlay of ₹76,000 crore.
• The Nano Mission was launched by the Department of Science and Technology in 2007; the earlier Nano Science and Technology Initiative began in 2001.
• The National Quantum Mission was approved by the Union Cabinet in April 2023 and is implemented by the Department of Science and Technology.
• The National Quantum Mission's thematic hubs cover quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum materials and devices.
• Nano-fabrication cleanrooms rely on lithography, thin-film deposition and etching to build devices at the nanometre scale.
• IIT Roorkee stands at Roorkee, in Haridwar district of Uttarakhand.

• The stem asks for the statement that is incorrect. Reading it as 'which is correct' turns three sound options into candidates and reduces the item to a guess.
• Samudrayan reads like a technology brand until you take the root: samudra, the sea. The name itself places it with deep-ocean work.
• Treating semiconductor, nano and quantum as three separate worlds. They share one fabrication toolchain, which is why a single cleanroom can be tied to each of the three named here.
• Straining to recall the IIT Roorkee facility itself. The mark turns on what each named mission does, and that is decidable without any detail about the laboratory.
• Assuming a mission's parent ministry from its subject alone. Chips sit with MeitY while nanoscience and quantum sit with DST, even though the three overlap technically.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Samudrayan, India's manned deep-ocean mission, is being implemented by which one of the following?

  • (a)National Institute of Ocean Technology, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences
  • (b)National Institute of Oceanography, under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
  • (c)Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways
  • (d)Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
  Answera — the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai, an autonomous institute of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, is developing the Matsya-6000 submersible under the Deep Ocean Mission.

  b names a CSIR laboratory that works on ocean science but not this submersible. c places INCOIS under the wrong ministry; it is an Earth Sciences body. d names a computing organisation with no role in building the vehicle.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following missions: 1. India Semiconductor Mission 2. Nano Mission 3. National Quantum Mission. Which of the above is/are implemented by the Department of Science and Technology?

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)2 and 3 only
  • (c)1 and 3 only
  • (d)1, 2 and 3
  Answerb — the Nano Mission and the National Quantum Mission are both run by the Department of Science and Technology.

  The India Semiconductor Mission sits with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, as a division of Digital India Corporation. Any option that includes 1 therefore fails, which removes a, c and d.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A nano-fabrication cleanroom of the kind used for semiconductor research is directly useful for which of the following? 1. Patterning integrated-circuit structures by lithography 2. Depositing thin films for nanoscale devices 3. Fabricating solid-state devices used in quantum computing research

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)1 and 3 only
  • (c)2 and 3 only
  • (d)1, 2 and 3
  Answerd — lithographic patterning, thin-film deposition and solid-state device fabrication are the standard operations of a semiconductor cleanroom.

  Quantum hardware such as superconducting and photonic devices is built with those same steps, so statement 3 belongs as much as 1 and 2. Options a, b and c each drop one operation the facility performs.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The manned submersible being developed under India's Samudrayan mission is designed to carry a three-member crew to a depth of about

  • (a)1,000 metres
  • (b)3,000 metres
  • (c)6,000 metres
  • (d)11,000 metres
  Answerc — the vehicle is Matsya-6000, designed to take three people to 6,000 metres, and the design depth is carried in its name.

  a and b fall short of that design depth. d is close to the depth of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, far below what this vehicle is being built to reach.