- Hurricane Helene’s damage to a North Carolina town has disrupted the supply of ultra-pure quartz, a critical material for the tech industry.
- This incident highlights the tech industry’s dependence on single-source materials and its vulnerability to natural disasters and geopolitical events.
- Diversification of supply sources and development of alternative materials are crucial for ensuring the resilience of the tech industry’s supply chain.
Among the horrific reports about the damage Hurricane Helene unleashed on the southeastern United States was one about Spruce Pine, North Carolina, population 2,194 (as of the 2020 census). The town was hard hit. One resident reported that the water treatment plant “washed away.” Many of the town’s old brick riverfront buildings are gone, and the mud is everywhere.
Just to the north of Spruce Pine is what could easily be considered a single point of failure in the supply chain that makes the modern high-tech world possible. It’s there that two companies mine quartz so pure that it is suitable (after some refining) for the high-temperature crucibles that are used to melt silicon—melting point 1414 degrees C or 2577 degrees F. I’m referring to the silicon destined to be made into silicon wafers, the basis for modern electronics and photovoltaic solar cells. The crucibles have to be made from ultra-pure quartz so that they don’t contain impurities that could ruin the silicon. Top-of-the-line ultra-pure quartz has no more than 80 molecules of impurities for every one billion molecules of silicon dioxide, the chemical formula of sand which turns into quartz in the Earth’s crust under great pressures and high temperatures.
It turns out that Spruce Pine produces most of the ultra-pure quartz in the world. Exactly what percentage is a secret held within a small and secretive industry. The largest producer, Sibelco, announced that operations have ceased at its Spruce Pine mines as of September 26. The Quartz Corp. also announced a shutdown as of the same day. How long the two companies’ operations will be down is unknown.
The tech industry is putting on a brave face and saying that their operations have not been affected. The problem isn’t one for current production. There are plenty of crucibles already out there. The problem will come with the breakneck expansion of the tech industry and its need for ever increasing deliveries of silicon wafers for all those AI-related chips, solar cells, and Internet-of-Things devices for which demand is growing rapidly.
There are other sources of ultra-pure quartz, but they would have to be developed. In the alternative, purification methods could be developed or extended to make ultra-pure quartz from not-so-pure quartz. All that would have a cost and
