Hacker News Reader

Comment by isykt | Hacker News Reader

The world’s largest deposit of ultra pure quartz, which is needed for the very high end processors, is in North Carolina.

The renaissance is real, or is about to be.

View on HN

Is it difficult to refine less-pure quartz?

I just assumed they had processes for eliminating any and all contaminants.

It is only done in China, Japan, the United States, Germany, and Italy. Since some of the newer semiconductors are shaped at 99.9999999999% (literally, 10 9s) pure, only a few places in the world can do the purification. China, and only China, can do 99.9999999 (Seven 9s) at scale, which is good enough for solar panels.

Sorry, let me clarify: I'm assuming that the requirements are so stringent that all quartz ore needs to be purified.

So I'm wondering how much the initial ore purity really matters.

The process is more complex and the energy more intense the more 9’s you need, because the contaminates in quartz are different depending on where it was mined. This complexity is why there’s only one place in the world that can do it at solar panel demand scale — and that’s because China dumped a ton of money into the process and doesn’t have strict pollution laws. If you can start with purer quartz, you’re way ahead of reaching scalable refinement.

Here's a great video on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIRfWyyOFPg

Yep, near Spruce Pine, NC. My Grandad lived his whole life in that area and would tell stories about mining mica and riding the trains they used to transport it. There's still a bit of the train system left, at a local amusement park, Tweetsie Railroad.

What is quartz used for beyond oscillators?

Reduce pure quartz, get pure silicon.

Quartz = SiO2 --> Silicon and Oxygen QED

i read the "The resonance is real"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com