LUBBOCK, Texas (NEWS RELEASE) – Two feet of rain from Hurricane Helene caused flooding, power and communication outages in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, halting operations at The Quartz Corp for the foreseeable future since Sept. 26. The Quartz Corp provides purified quartz to semiconductor customers around the globe through the production of silicon.
Hurricane Helene is the most recent disruption of semiconductor supply from extreme weather, natural disasters, trading conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic (during which a semiconductor shortage crisis occurred that lasted several years and caused the cancellation and higher prices of countless products).
Current semiconductor devices heavily rely on silicon and its doped derivatives. As one of few super-pure quartz mines and production facilities worldwide, the closure of The Quartz Corp has the company accessing its feed stock in Norway to avoid widespread implications on the semiconductor industry. This is one reason Minxiang “Glenn” Zeng, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University, suggests that reducing reliance on silicon in semiconductors might be worth consideration.
“When people think of semiconductors, they might not often consider options beyond traditional rigid silicon,” Zeng said. “However, there are many possibilities in semiconductors, and at Texas Tech, we are exploring emerging candidates like printable electronics made from semiconductor nano-inks.”
Semiconductors can be found virtually everywhere, including in phones, computers, sensors and health care devices, and most are made with silicon.
Alternatives to silicon in the semiconductor industry include materials like gallium nitride and silicon carbide, which offer increased efficiency in high-power and high-frequency applications.
“When we have other options rather than silicon-based semiconductors, this will strengthen our supply chain of semiconductor chips and electronics,” Zeng said.
Materials like graphene, metal chalcogenides and two-dimensional materials are being explored for faster, more flexible and nanoscale electronics. While these alternatives have advantages, an effective manufacturing infrastructure for them is not established. Researchers at Texas Tech, including Zeng, are actively working to alleviate this issue through their research.
Zeng has prioritized expanding other options to silicon semiconductors through his National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research into methods to make metal chalcogenide materials a more resilient semiconductor option by increasing its stability at high temperatures and other extreme conditions.
In 2021, it was estimated semiconductor sales would grow by more than 20% to about $600 billion, with automotive, data storage and wireless industries leading the market. The recent surge in artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted this demand.
“When we are using AI, the demand for computing is exponentially increased. In order to reliably predict the AI model, you need to have a lot of data, and to process that data, you need use a lot of computation power from hardware like semiconductor chips. That’s why there’s a shortage in terms of chips, because you have a lot of demand, but the supply is kind of limited.”
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