2 ms·

Adding to your addition, let’s not forget the “raw” materials, which are a constant headache to keep supplied and qualified. Consider a not entirely hypothetica

Adding to your addition, let’s not forget the “raw” materials, which are a constant headache to keep supplied and qualified. Consider a not entirely hypothetical example where your regular supplier of sulfuric acid is late. Your iso tank runs out and you have to tap a drum. The drum is from a qualified source, but it’s been sitting around for a while. The drum may have started degrading; is the sulfuric still pure enough to use? If it’s not, you have to idle your billion dollar fab until you can source another iso. Anyway, multiply this headache by nitric acid, hydrofluoric, bare wafers, several kinds of photoresist, arsine, phosphene, diborane, silane, cmp slurry, and dozens of other ingredients, plus oem spares for ten thousand different consumables for your equipment. Supply chain for semiconductors is no joke.

reaperman 2y ago
Supply chain for liquid and gas materials in the USA is quite robust. The western hemisphere's largest industrial complex (the Gulf Coast refining industry) can or does supply plenty of anything you can think of - including everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. But cost is much higher than in China, and things like "bare wafers" are not included in that petrochemical output.
- sevensor 2y ago
  > everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. Are you familiar with the trace metals requirements of semiconductor processing? And the volume of an iso tank? And the volatility of the petrochemical refining industry? I wouldn’t write off the difficulty of maintaining qualified suppliers quite so cavalierly.