this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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The world's semiconductor industry hinges on a single quartz factory in North Carolina (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 52 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Headline is a bit clickbaity. The article is too, but the headline is worse. This factory is the only one processing the local quartz deposits, which are the purest known in the world (at least to hear the article say it), to the degree that they do, and the resulting quartz is necessary to make crucibles for chip fabrication, among other things. The mining and/or industrial processes needed to replace either would be extremely expensive and take several years to ramp up, but the result would be "only" a price spike, new product delays, and a general logistics clusterfuck, not the end of the industry. Some of the article's commenters suggest that it's partially due to the ready availability and relatively low price of quartz from the factory that several other slightly less desirable facilities and mines shut down or scaled back. So, it's all a bit breathless, but it does look like a significant, perhaps troubling, industrial bottleneck.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I used to work for a foreign company in the US that made this stuff. All the crucibles were made out of graphite, never saw a quartz crucible, maybe they are used in the making of them via ingredient or mold, or maybe they produce a different quality of silicon. We "grew" the silicon into these big (ranging from 2-4ish ft long) cylinder like crystals where they would be shipped off to another area to be sliced into thin wafers for chips. The crucibles were good for maybe I think under 100 runs before they needed to be replaced if they didn't fail before that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Seems that quartz is involved in a “Czochralski” method crucible. I dunno. I figured I dun gud just to read the article, LOL.