Will semiconductor manufacturing be derailed by Hurricane Helene?

The deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina has additionally drawn consideration for its potential disruptions to the tech trade. Destruction from Hurricane Helene is threatening one of many trade’s main provide chains – a North Carolina mining city that provides high-purity quartz essential for manufacturing the chips present in smartphones and knowledge centres worldwide.

The mining city of Spruce Pine is among the many many US communities impacted by Hurricane Helene, which killed greater than 200 individuals in a number of states, displaced 1000’s and left greater than one million properties and companies with out energy. The storm pushed 900 kilometres inland from the Florida coast and inflicted lethal floods throughout a large area, even reaching deep inside the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, the place the Spruce Pine quartz mines are positioned.

Here’s what you must learn about how Helene’s ripple results may affect the tech trade.

Why is high-purity quartz so necessary?

Excessive-purity quartz is used to make fused-quartz crucibles, cylindrical containers which are key to the chip-manufacturing course of as a result of they’ll endure the excessive temperatures required to soften silicon. The melting-point temperature for semiconductor-grade polysilicon is round 1425°C (2597°F), and quartz crucibles can usually face up to temperatures of as much as 1650°C (3000°F).

Within the chip manufacturing course of, the fused-quartz crucibles are crammed with molten silicon. A silicon seed crystal is dipped into the melted silicon inside the spinning crucible in order that it might develop right into a considerably bigger silicon ingot earlier than being steadily drawn out. A completely grown ingot can weigh over 500 kilograms.

These silicon ingots are then minimize into silicon wafers, which in flip may be imprinted with the transistor patterns that type the muse of recent laptop chips.

The place does high-purity quartz come from?

The pure deposits of quartz present in Spruce Pine originated when North America and Africa collided to type the supercontinent Pangaea about 300 million years in the past. That course of created the Appalachian mountains and likewise pressured a part of Earth’s oceanic crust to sink beneath North America, the place the extraordinary warmth and stress close to the planet’s mantle melted ocean sediment and rock.

The ensuing lava slowly cooled over time to type pegmatite rock deposits containing massive mineral crystals – together with high-purity quartz. These pegmatite formations finally turned extra accessible close to the floor due to extra geological upheaval and weathering.

How did Hurricane Helene affect quartz mining operations?

The Spruce Pine mining district at present has quartz mining and refining operations owned by Belgium-based Sibelco and Norway-based The Quartz Corp. Each corporations shut down operations on 26 September and haven’t but stated after they may restart.

The businesses say they’ve confirmed the security of their workers and contractors within the space – and so they described comparatively minimal direct harm to their amenities.

“The preliminary evaluation signifies that our working amenities within the Spruce Pine area have solely sustained minor harm,” stated Sibelco in a 3 October assertion. “Our devoted groups are on-site, conducting cleanup and restore actions to restart operations as quickly as we will.”

“Now we have been in a position to conduct the primary visible inspections of our vegetation and it could seem that harm is generally concentrated round ancillary models,” stated The Quartz Corp in a assertion on 2 October. However the firm additionally cautioned that resumption of mining operations “may also rely upon the rebuilding of native infrastructure” – lots of the roads within the space had been closed and broken within the quick wake of the storm.

Equally, Sibelco referenced energy outages from the storm as one problem. “Restoring energy stays essential to resuming our operations,” stated the corporate in its assertion. “The restore of energy traces resulting in our vegetation has progressed considerably.”

The Quartz Corp additionally described having stockpiles of quartz in Norway that may very well be utilized in ongoing purification processing operations, together with further “security shares of completed merchandise” that might keep away from any vital shortages for purchasers – together with semiconductor producers – within the quick or medium time period.

Will Helene disrupt the provision of semiconductors?

Main semiconductor producers have stated that they at present don’t anticipate disruptions to their operations within the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

TSMC, a Taiwanese firm that’s the world’s main chip maker, described having “numerous world suppliers” to attract upon. “By means of an efficient threat administration system and shut partnerships with suppliers, we at present don’t anticipate any important affect on the corporate’s operations,” says a TSMC spokesperson. “We’ll maintain monitoring the state of affairs intently.”

Samsung Electronics, which ranks because the second largest chip maker and is headquartered in South Korea, informed New Scientist that the corporate’s operations weren’t affected.

GlobalFoundries, the most important semiconductor producer based mostly within the US, described itself as having the “flexibility to leverage various sources for key provides” with chip-making amenities on three continents. “We’re in touch with our world suppliers and don’t anticipate any disruption to our provide of quartz as a consequence of Hurricane Helene,” says a GlobalFoundries spokesperson.

Corporations that produce uncooked silicon wafers at present have wafer stockpiles adequate to final anyplace from three to eight months, stated Dylan Patel at SemiAnalysis, an impartial analysis agency, in a social media publish.

Are there various sources of quartz for the worldwide semiconductor trade?

Spruce Pine “has a close to distinctive mixture of purity, availability and worth,” wrote Ed Conway, a journalist at Sky Information and writer of Materials World, in a Substack publish. However he additionally pointed to different high-purity quartz mines in China, Russia and Brazil.

Pure high-purity quartz deposits are “scarce”, however corporations can use purification strategies if wanted and even synthetically produce pure quartz, stated Patel. He additionally pointed to the corporate Ferroglobe, which acquired a high-purity quartz mine in South Carolina in October 2023. An organization press launch projected that mining operations may start within the second half of 2024.