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Spruce Pine, North Carolina Did you know?

mullet

mullet

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Aug 19, 2004
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Spruce Pine, North Carolina Did you know? I didn't.

If the supply of this one material stopped flowing, the world would effectively slip backward in time 25 years. This is the story of America’s hidden monopoly on the ultra-pure quartz found in Spruce Pine, North Carolina—the only place on Earth capable of producing the raw material for advanced computer chips

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9V4jNTLGus
 
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Pretty certain that, nowadays, most applications outside of jewelry use synthetic quartz, so the purity of the source doesn't matter all that much.
 
emphy said:
Pretty certain that, nowadays, most applications outside of jewelry use synthetic quartz.
Click to expand...
Actually no that mine produces a lot of it because it's cheaper to mine it than make it.

High purity quartz is used in semiconductor manufacturing among other things. Thing is it can be made. Pure quartz is silicon dioxide. Not complicated. It's just cheaper to mine it. If USA, say, cut off the Chinese they'd just build some plants and make it. It would cause a disruption and increase their production costs sure, but it's not something they can't work around. It'd be more like a massive hiccup until they built the facilities needed to make the stuff.
 
zandor said:
Actually no that mine produces a lot of it because it's cheaper to mine it than make it.

High purity quartz is used in semiconductor manufacturing among other things. Thing is it can be made. Pure quartz is silicon dioxide. Not complicated. It's just cheaper to mine it. If USA, say, cut off the Chinese they'd just build some plants and make it. It would cause a disruption and increase their production costs sure, but it's not something they can't work around. It'd be more like a massive hiccup until they built the facilities needed to make the stuff.
Click to expand...
That's what I was thinking. You can grow just about any crystal. Even diamonds.
Also, what kind of failure rates would you be looking at with 99.8% silicon? Sure there are impurities, but how much do they matter?
If there's a will, there's a way.
Still could be true, though. Cool video. Thanks for sharing!
 
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