Posted on 07/10/2023 3:38:08 AM PDT by FarCenter
From August, China is to restrict exports of gallium and germanium, two critical elements for making semiconductor chips.
With China dominating the supply of both elements, exporters will now need special licenses to get them out of the country. The move has the potential to harm a range of Western tech manufacturers that use these elements to make their products.
The move is reportedly in response to Western restrictions on equipment vital for making semiconductor devices.
Above all, the US CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 curtailed exports of high-end microchips and technology to China, potentially affecting Beijing’s capacity for high-performance computing in areas such as defense. Other nations such as Japan and the Netherlands have also imposed restrictions.
So how important are the new Chinese restrictions and what are the implications likely to be?
Silicon is the most widely used material in semiconductors, and is very abundant. But germanium and gallium have specific properties that are hard to replicate and lend themselves to certain niche applications. These get incorporated into countless devices such as smartphones, laptops, solar panels and medical equipment, as well as defense applications.
Both elements are also crucial to technological advancement over the next few years. Germanium is particularly useful in space technologies such as solar cells because it is more resistant to cosmic radiation than silicon.
With the physical limits of silicon being approached in some technologies, increased use of germanium is mooted as a way of overcoming these limits. It is already used in small quantities in some semiconductors to improve things like electron flow and thermal conductivity.
As for gallium, 95% of it is used in a material called gallium arsenide, which is used in semiconductors with higher performance and lower power-consumption applications than silicon. These are used in things like blue and violet LEDs and microwave devices.
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So this latest development is concerning to say the least. At a time when the international challenges faced by humanity are greater than ever, the emergence of a new resource nationalism is the last thing anyone needed.
We start opening our own mines for them?
Gallium is found in association with bauxite. If china restricts export, the market will determine which other sources will prevail with new production
Exactly. Gallium exists as trace amounts in zinc and in bauxite. There are other ways to get it. It would be one of the easier rare sources to obtain outside of China should a country wish to.
The process is not super complicated either, it is smelting, most any industrialized country could start a factory, the only limit would be obtaining Zinc and Bauxite.
See the link for the world deposites
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/bauxite-deposit-world-map
This export restriction from China is more a nuisance than anything, they risk loosing an GDP product should they force other countries to produce their own.
Ding! We tell the Gaia worshipers to shove it and start mining our own again......something we should have been doing all along anyway.
Short Dell and HPQ stock?
This just proves that germanium is a relevant element.
No, geraniums?
Oh, never mind...
Bkmk
>>We start opening our own mines for them?
You’d be in production in 15 years or so. 10 years to do the planning, environmental studies, permitting, etc, and 5 years to develop the mine, ore processing facilities, refining, etc.
We have massive stockpiles of FJ Bideninum and Trannyite
Can we send China those in exchange?
No sale. China has determined that these elements cause brain failure.
Purchase Greenland.
Check
if china has the ability to make their own chips, why would the us export chips to china??
What is being curtailed is the export of chips to China which are designed in the US or use equipment with US licensed patents in their fabrication.
Most of the chips are fabbed in Taiwan and packaged in SE Asia or China, and are not actually manufactured and shipped from the US.
However, there are some specialty chips that are fabbed in the US, but that is a small, although important, percentage.
“We start opening our own mines for them?”
Not under China Joe. He just shut down even more mining projects.
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