view the rest of the comments
news
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
here's some background information and speculation, as someone not involved in the industy. the silicon wafers used for making chips are big single crystals, which are made by the Czochralski method the crucible is also made of silica and needs to be very perfect, so that no crystals are seeded from the walls, so it makes sense to me that the crucible needs to be at least the purity of the desired silicon wafers - which is at least 99.9999% pure and for research-grade samples 99.99999999% pure. I suspect that the leading-edge nodes requires the high-end of this scale. Its economical to start with the highest purity material that you can, which according to Conway's Material World comes from spruce pine, but its possible to use a lower grade starting material.
High purity quartz has been identified as a strategic resource so a number of countries have started exploring sites or subsiding this sort of quartz mining - Russia, China, Australia and a few others