this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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What’s extremely rare about silicon?
Purity is a concern.
https://www.techspot.com/news/102377-two-mines-north-carolina-key-suppliers-world-semiconductor.html
But that's more of an economic issue than it is a technical one. It's possible to process the less pure stuff, but it's cheaper to just get the good stuff to start with.
Maybe it's about the stuff that's added to the silicon.
"Extremely rare rocks" is not the same thing as "extremely rare minerals" and is definitely not the same thing as "extremely rare elements."
Silicon itself is certainly not rare (even if the purification process is somewhat exigent on the feedstock), but modern chips uses a lot of rare-ish elements in their makeup (hafnium for mosfet gates, gold for chip/package connexion, etc...).