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 business. Destruction from Hurricane Helene is threatening one of many business’s main provide chains – a North Carolina mining city that provides high-purity quartz essential for manufacturing the chips present in smartphones and information 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 it is advisable find out about how Helene’s ripple results might affect the tech business.

Why is high-purity quartz so vital?

Excessive-purity quartz is used to make fused-quartz crucibles, cylindrical containers which can be key to the chip-manufacturing course of as a result of they will 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 sometimes stand 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 may develop right into a considerably bigger silicon ingot earlier than being step by step drawn out. A completely grown ingot can weigh over 500 kilograms.

These silicon ingots are then minimize into silicon wafers, which in flip might be imprinted with the transistor patterns that kind the inspiration 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 kind the supercontinent Pangaea about 300 million years in the past. That course of created the Appalachian mountains and in addition 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 kind pegmatite rock deposits containing massive mineral crystals – together with high-purity quartz. These pegmatite formations ultimately 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 presently 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 mentioned after they would possibly restart.

The businesses say they’ve confirmed the protection of their staff and contractors within the space – they usually described comparatively minimal direct injury to their services.

“The initial assessment indicates that our operating facilities in the Spruce Pine region have only sustained minor damage,” mentioned Sibelco in a 3 October assertion. “Our dedicated teams are on-site, conducting cleanup and repair activities to restart operations as soon as we can.”

“We have been able to conduct the first visual inspections of our plants and it would appear that damage is mostly concentrated around ancillary units,” mentioned The Quartz Corp in an announcement on 2 October. However the firm additionally cautioned that resumption of mining operations “will also depend on the rebuilding of local infrastructure” – lots of the roads within the space had been closed and broken within the instant wake of the storm.

Equally, Sibelco referenced energy outages from the storm as one problem. “Restoring power remains crucial to resuming our operations,” mentioned the corporate in its assertion. “The repair of power lines leading to our plants has progressed significantly.”

The Quartz Corp additionally described having stockpiles of quartz in Norway that might be utilized in ongoing purification processing operations, together with extra “safety stocks of finished products” that would keep away from any vital shortages for patrons – together with semiconductor producers – within the brief or medium time period.

Will Helene disrupt the provision of semiconductors?

Main semiconductor producers have mentioned that they presently 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 “diverse global suppliers” to attract upon. “Through an effective risk management system and close partnerships with suppliers, we currently do not anticipate any significant impact on the company’s operations,” says a TSMC spokesperson. “We will keep monitoring the situation closely.”

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

GlobalFoundries, the most important semiconductor producer primarily based within the US, described itself as having the “flexibility to leverage alternative sources for key supplies” with chip-making services on three continents. “We are in contact with our global suppliers and do not expect any disruption to our supply of quartz due to Hurricane Helene,” says a GlobalFoundries spokesperson.

Corporations that produce uncooked silicon wafers presently have wafer stockpiles ample to final wherever from three to eight months, mentioned Dylan Patel at SemiAnalysis, an impartial analysis agency, in a social media put up.

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

Spruce Pine “has a near unique combination of purity, availability and price,” wrote Ed Conway, a journalist at Sky Information and writer of Materials World, in a Substack put up. 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, mentioned 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 might start within the second half of 2024.