Hurricane Helene Took Out NC Town the Entire Tech World Relies On (axios.com) 66
The small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which supplies high-purity quartz essential for semiconductor production, is reeling from the damage caused by Tropical Storm Helene. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Spruce Pine is one of the only places in the world to mine high-purity quartz. The mineral is an essential ingredient of chips in countless products, including medical devices, solar panels, cellphones and the chips powering the latest tech craze: artificial intelligence. It's difficult to underscore the significance of Spruce Pine -- a town of about 2,000 people, known for its charming downtown and blossoming arts scene -- to the global economy. Economics editor Ed Conway put it best in his 2023 book "Material World," writing: "It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz -- the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can't make silicon wafers -- it has to come from Spruce Pine."
The Quartz Corp and Sibelco both export high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine. While there are other places to find the material, such as Russia and Brazil, this mountain town has the highest quantity of the highest purity, says Conway. A few weeks of shutdown is not the end of the world, Conway tells Axios. However, longer than that could put the industry into "another crisis." The semiconductor industry would need to find alternatives. [...] The mines in Spruce Pine are still accounting for their workers and families, the international companies stated. The level of destruction at the sites is unknown. However, even if the facilities are intact, the railroads that move the quartz will likely need drastic repairs. The Quartz Corp and Sibelco temporarily halted operations on Sept. 26 and haven't said when they might reopen. "This is second order of priority," The Quartz Corp said in a statement. "Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families."
The Quartz Corp and Sibelco both export high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine. While there are other places to find the material, such as Russia and Brazil, this mountain town has the highest quantity of the highest purity, says Conway. A few weeks of shutdown is not the end of the world, Conway tells Axios. However, longer than that could put the industry into "another crisis." The semiconductor industry would need to find alternatives. [...] The mines in Spruce Pine are still accounting for their workers and families, the international companies stated. The level of destruction at the sites is unknown. However, even if the facilities are intact, the railroads that move the quartz will likely need drastic repairs. The Quartz Corp and Sibelco temporarily halted operations on Sept. 26 and haven't said when they might reopen. "This is second order of priority," The Quartz Corp said in a statement. "Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families."
piezo (Score:4, Funny)
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There is only one way to find out. ;)
Re:Top 10 exporters of high quality quartz (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong kind of quartz. This chart is about high quality quartz. The one being talked about in the topic is high purity quartz. It's a different mineral.
There are basically three main manufacturers of HPQ. Sibelco, TQC and Pacific Quartz. Here's a good primer:
https://maxtonco.com/top-3-hig... [maxtonco.com]
And all of the highest purity quartz comes from that NC mountain. It's a complete monopoly.
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Re: Top 10 exporters of high quality quartz (Score:2)
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It's likely because of costs. If we can make high purity synthetic diamonds, we ought to be able to make high purity synthetic quartz. But the cost might be a bit high.
Re:Top 10 exporters of high quality quartz (Score:4, Informative)
Consequently, growing diamonds (natural or synthetic) tend to reject contaminant material at the growing surface. Few contaminants get through the growing process at more than a few ppm level.
Quartz, on the other hand, is a bit promiscuous. Several species can substitute into the lattice at fractions of a percent (100s of ppm), including water at even higher levels. It's surface energy isn't terribly high, so if you're growing randomly oriented quartz grains (e.g., in a sandstone), you typically don't get well-formed quartz crystals. If there are, say, flakes of mica in your sand, their cleavage surfaces will dominate where the quartz grows to.
But you can purify silicon-containing materials using wet chemistry, by the ton if necessary. The only impediment to making arbitrarily large amounts of arbitrarily-pure silica glass crucibles is cost. As it is with everything.
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I infer from the talk about melting silica for making (electronics) wafers, this particular deposit is particularly low in elements that would mess with the doping of a wafer material - phosphorus, boron, aluminium, are the ones that spring to mind, with the aluminium being the particularly suspicious one to my geological mind.
But "meh" - if you want to make a low-dopant crucible from fused si
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And all of the highest purity quartz comes from that NC mountain. It's a complete monopoly.
Labeling that phenomenon a “monopoly” is like a premium purse manufacturer accusing a literal crocodile of patent and design infringement. Organizations may artificially create a monopoly around a resource, but that’s hardly the fault of nature. It’s a “complete” monopoly because human corruption made it so.
And to be quite honest, this sounds more like a town trying to redefine quartz as gold with clickbait hype for their own benefit. Wonder why no one heard of this to
Re: Top 10 exporters of high quality quartz (Score:3)
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No, this is monopoly as in this is the sole source of the high purity level of quartz required to grow silicone crystals needed for high end wafer production. The problem is essentially in node shrinks and wafer size growth. On one hand, you have less error tolerance for faults in wafers due to process shrink. On the other hand, you have less tolerance for faults in wafers due to growth of wafer size.
And that's why purity of quartz needed to make wafers is extreme, and it must be at volume. And there's exac
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You want to watch spelling errors like that - it marks you as someone who doesn't actually know any significant chemistry when talking about what is fundamentally a chemical question.
If you had any significant history in chemistry, you would have developed a strong aversion reaction (projectile vomiting, that sort of thing) to people writing "silicone [wikipedia.org]" ("a polymer composed of repeating u
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I apologize for English being my third language, and not being taught chemistry in English but in Finnish. Where names of many elements and compounds are actually entirely different due to not being a Germanic language like English, but belonging to Finno-Ugric language family instead.
Just to confirm your level of linguistic chemical puritanism, how do you spell the 13th element on periodic table, and what is the correct punishment for spelling it wrong as a native English speaker?
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No, this is monopoly as in this is the sole source of the high purity level of quartz required to grow silicone crystals needed for high end wafer production.
No. Silicon wafers can be made of sand if needed. For chips, it will require more steps to refine sand into the purity that this quartz has naturally.
The problem is essentially in node shrinks and wafer size growth.
Again no. The industry transitioned to 300mm starting in the year 2000. That was 24 years ago. There has been little to no movement to 450mm due to mainly cost considerations. The last serious talk about 450mm was in the 2010s and those projections were for use of 450mm by today. That has not happened. From what I know, 450mm is dead.
And that's why purity of quartz needed to make wafers is extreme, and it must be at volume. And there's exactly one place on the planet we have found quartz of sufficient quality for our current needs. Or at least there was until very recently, as the explosion in need over last few years generated significant demand, so there has been a lot of prospecting. There may have been some alternative sources coming online in last couple of years that I'm unaware of. But as of time I last checked this, HPQ is a full on monopoly for mines in that single mountain in NC.
Again, silicon wafers were
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For those who don't understand the subject of industrial production, there's only one key quote needed to understand why this user is in complete agreement with me, even though he is trying to project an image of disagreement:
>It will just cost more to refine silicon.
Yes. Yes it will. Quite a lot in fact, and have a higher error rate to go with it.
Completely coincidentally, do you know why we don't make cutting edge processes with DUV in the same field? That's right, same exact reason.
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For those who don't understand the subject of industrial production, there's only one key quote needed to understand why this user is in complete agreement with me, even though he is trying to project an image of disagreement:
You are conveying that making silicon wafers is impossible without this mine. That's not remotely true. Also you have misrepresented key facts as wafer size growth stopped 24 years ago with the migration to 300mm. Node shrink is the current and only growth in the industry now. Facts and details matter.
Yes. Yes it will. Quite a lot in fact, and have a higher error rate to go with it.
What are you talking about? There are less pure sources of quartz. They will require more refinement to be used.
Completely coincidentally, do you know why we don't make cutting edge processes with DUV in the same field? That's right, same exact reason.
The number 1 factor in the chip making industry: Cost. DUV could be used for 7nm. It costs more
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You forgot https://www.wacker.com/ [wacker.com]
World leader in silicon waver production.
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We're talking about people sourcing the materials, not doing the refining and processing of already sourced materials. These companies don't make wafers, they mine quartz of sufficient purity to suit the process for making high end wafers.
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Shouldn't you be knocking on doors in swing-states?
Gotta love how the “United” States of America has been reduced to The Mixed living in half a dozen purple States. Hell of a way to define democracy, as if to say Fuck The Rest.
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Gotta love how the âoeUnitedâ States of America has been reduced to The Mixed living in half a dozen purple States. Hell of a way to define democracy, as if to say Fuck The Rest.
Oof sorry about your troll mod, there. I shoulda warned you not to fact-check the right!
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Ukraine's a military bargain: our #2 enemy is getting decimated without us sending troops.
Israel on the other hand requires a tub of Alka-Seltzer.
Just to be clear, we are talking about sand... (Score:1)
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No, explicitly not crystals but silica glass.
Silica has four different crystal structures (quartz-alpha and -beta ; cristobalite ; tridymite) which inter-convert in the few hundred degrees between silicon's melting point and the melting point of the different crystal structures of silica. If your crucible experiences thermal cycling, making it of crystalline silica (whatever form you initially use) you'll get growth of one or more of the other forms, with up to several
priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
The sad part for the community is that the mine will be more of a priority for recovery than the people.
Re:priorities (Score:4, Informative)
Re:priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Reopening the mine, getting people back to work and earning an income is a good way to help them recover.
Re:priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
A mine with a valuable resource gives people a reason to stay and a reason for investment into infrastructure to move the minerals and to build homes for the workers and businesses to serve the needs of the people living in those homes, much in the same way the needs of farmers were the reason for a town to spring up in the first place. Their mine will give their community a better chance at survival than the sympathies of a country.
Re: priorities (Score:2)
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There are no known other sources. That mountain is geologically unique in the world. There are mountains of similar make, but they do not produce quartz of quite as high purity.
And when it comes to top tier semiconductors, you need high purity at scale. So you need that NC mountain mines to function.
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And when it comes to top tier semiconductors, you need high purity at scale. So you need that NC mountain mines to function.
There is too much emphasis on "need". It will cost more if this source is not used. It is not impossible to use other sources.
China (Score:2)
Re: China (Score:2)
Read what you wrote back to yourself and see if you can spot your error.
Question for the experts (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks to Luckyo who posted this link for an intro to the subject:
https://maxtonco.com/top-3-hig... [maxtonco.com]
Follow these links as well:
https://www.sibelco.com/en [sibelco.com]
https://www.sibelco.com/en/150... [sibelco.com]
My question is this:
Industry needs the quartz.
Sibelco et al supply it as they do because high grade ores can be mined and processed to serve the needs of customers and the industry, and mining nature's ore is the most economically efficient way to do so.
But, what if supply dries up, because the ore body is spent, or because of geopolitical BS, or "the economy" changes, or in this case due to natural disaster?
Can such high grade quartz be manufactured.
We can do the same for diamonds using carbon, so why not for quartz using silicon or silica?
There was an economic incentive to do so for diamonds because diamonds have high retail value.
Sand, silica, and glass are abundant and cheap, so mining existing deposits is cheap, but if the natural reserves dry up, could manufactured quartz be just as or nearly as cheap?
Is this technically possible?
(Has it been demonstrated or done already?)
If the right economic or geopolitical incentive was there, could this be done, and with how much development effort or lead time?
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Can such high grade quartz be manufactured.
Yes, but at higher cost. It's not like the Quartz at Spruce Pine has no contaminants at all, it is just more pure than in other places, so it requires less expensive processing to reach the required purity.
Re:Question for the experts (Score:5, Informative)
They already produce synthetic High Purity Quartz for the semiconductor industry, and they use a CVD process similar to synthetic diamonds. It's a lot slower and more expensive than just digging it out of the ground which is why it isn't the primary method of obtaining this material.
https://www.ndk.com/en/product... [ndk.com]
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But, what if supply dries up, because the ore body is spent, or because of geopolitical BS, or "the economy" changes, or in this case due to natural disaster?
Silicon is not a rare element on the Earth. There are other sources of silicon. There however will be higher costs to refine silicon.
Can such high grade quartz be manufactured.
Wrong question: "Can other materials be processed to be as useful" is the right question. Yes. It has been done before with other sources of silicon. Again, the main factor is cost.
Is this technically possible?
It has been in past decades. The main reason this quartz was used was because the high purity means fewer steps in refining meaning lower cost. It is not impossible to get that level of purity.
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If the US is so “frail” when it comes to surviving the worst of Mother Nature, please direct me to those “strong” countries that build Cat-5 rated houses, complete with manufacturer guarantees and warranties.
I’ll wait.
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If the US is so "frail" when it comes to surviving the worst of Mother Nature, please direct me to those "strong" countries that build Cat-5 rated houses, complete with manufacturer guarantees and warranties.
I thought your challenge was interesting, so I accepted. Here's what I found quite easily. https://www.attainablehome.com... [attainablehome.com]
My favorite was shipping container homes. The thought of adding a new room by ordering another shipping containing was quite amusing to me.
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If the US is so "frail" when it comes to surviving the worst of Mother Nature, please direct me to those "strong" countries that build Cat-5 rated houses, complete with manufacturer guarantees and warranties.
I thought your challenge was interesting, so I accepted. Here's what I found quite easily. https://www.attainablehome.com... [attainablehome.com] My favorite was shipping container homes. The thought of adding a new room by ordering another shipping containing was quite amusing to me.
”What Type of Home Is Best For Hurricanes?” the article asks. Well, for starters, not one built on a sand bar. Otherwise known as “Florida”. We wish strength was the only factor when building a “hurricane-grade” home. Turns out the foundation is kinda important too.
We’ve damn near seen more damage from rising waters, sinkholes, and rainfall creating flash flooding events than we have from hurricane force winds. Not to mention the tornados that spin off. Is tha
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Every house in Europe or Japan. No idea about China ...
Why would we not build safe houses?
You think we have no Cat 5 storms because you never hear in the news that a whole town got annihilated?
Well, the towns do not get annihilated: because they are storm proof. So not much news.
Considering that you can find many houses that are 300 to 500 years old: go figure.
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Every house in Europe or Japan. No idea about China ...
Why would we not build safe houses?
You think we have no Cat 5 storms because you never hear in the news that a whole town got annihilated?
Well, the towns do not get annihilated: because they are storm proof. So not much news.
Considering that you can find many houses that are 300 to 500 years old: go figure.
You can find 200-year old houses in America too. Whole towns can and do get annihilated. What you don’t follow, is the years long rebuilding process. (Neither would I, but I still recognize it’s happening).
Hurricanes are the specific threat I’m talking about here. They include storm surge and flood waters up to the second floor, and spin off tornadoes. Show me a 500-year old home that has survived many a hurricane, tornado, and 10-foot+ flood, and I’ll show you an uninhabitable
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Basically every house in Europe that is made from solid stone survived multiple events like that.
Perhaps a roof gets destroyed, and that is rare.
Of course not every house is prone to flooding. That happens only at the coast, or during snow melt along rivers.
Perhaps it is a insurance scam conspiracy in your country. No idea.
But that a Tornado destroyed some houses in Germany, that happens once every 100 years. The Tornado goes through a village or city and destroys a house or two and unroofed a hundred, dest
And money will fix this... (Score:2)
Either they have insurance, or someone else will get enough money to access a valuable resource again.
If it truly matters, then someone should legislate how secure access should be to it. I'm sure we could create transport methods that still worked with enough money thrown at it.
For crucibles... not wafers. (Score:2)
"... the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can't make silicon wafers ..."
So we've lost access to a material needed to make a tool with. I assume we can wait on that for a bit, worst case. Just keep using the old ones.
Or this some stupid disposable, one use 'tool'?
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So we've lost access to a material needed to make a tool with. I assume we can wait on that for a bit, worst case. Just keep using the old ones.
The crucibles are pretty much destroyed with each use. Also using the crucible imparts impurities like dopant that would contaminate the next batch. Crucibles are like coffee filters. They could be used multiple times but utility decreases with usage as well as more contaminants are introduced.
Sounds like hyperbole (Score:2)
I have never even heard of this dependency and quartz does not figure in regular chips. Is this about cutting tools?
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Thanks, interesting. So not really something that gets ordered just-in-time then. Might still be a problem. Or not. But having resilient supply lines was always an advantage for any industry. Maybe some people will now remember that as catastrophes like the one at hand get more and more frequent.
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Research: Find alternatives.