172
Silicon Shortage: Scarcity of the earth's one of most abundant elements?
If you are thinking suddenly why there is such a hike in the price and unavailability of computer chips, mobile phones, TVs, game consoles, etc? The reason is the ongoing global Silicon shortage, which is one of the greatest challenges the manufacturing industries have faced in recent years. Chips are called the brain of every electrical device. The market today is facing a shortage of manufacturing the brain of electrical devices. In this article, we will be discussing how and why the global shortage of silicon happened.
Image- Silicon Chip
What Is the reason behind the shortage?
You might be wondering even after the fact that silicon is one of the most abundant elements on the earth, then why is there such storage in the market? Why are companies panic buying silicon and its products?
Semiconductors are an essential integrant of electrical devices. They are used to make almost every electrical device ranging from Cars, mobile phones, computers, home appliances, to factory machinery. Silicon is the majorly used element as a semiconductor. Properties of semiconductors can be used to control the flow of electric current into a device.
Even though silicon is one of the most abundant elements on earth, the global shortage of chips and semiconductors is called silicon shortage as most of them are made of silicon.
Image- Silicon Semiconductor
Covid 19 has made an enormous impact in every aspect of industry and day to day life. Many big automobile companies had shut down some of their factories as there was a shortage of employees and a massive drop in sales. Because of that, they cancelled their silicon order which was used to make electrical equipment for the vehicle. This kind of response from the automobile companies caused the silicon chip companies to reduce the production and reassign the spare production capacity for the remainder of the year to the smartphone, computer and other companies.
Image- Graph
But in the Third Quarter of the year, the automobile companies started receiving more orders than they expected. Soon the smartphone, laptop/Desktop and home appliances companies started facing a shortage of silicon chips, as the chip companies also called "foundries" or "fabs" were not able to cope up with the exponential increase of demands due to the "stay at home" campaign, where people started working from home, students continued learning through online classes, many bought electrical gadgets like TVs to make it a less boring quarantine and the restrictions enforced in the ports and international borders compelled the supply chain graph of the silicon chips to take a downward fall. This led to the bullwhip effect, i.e., sudden fluctuation in inventory level caused due to unexpected response in customer demand further along the supply chain.
In these times of pandemic, panic buying is not limited to groceries, companies are double booking chips and stockpiling them. This act adds to the shortage of silicon chips and reduces the supply, which also is the reason for the hike in the prices of Graphical processing units (GPU), Central processing units (CPU), and other products where silicon chips are used.
How are Silicon Chips made?
Silicon, one of the most abundant elements on earth, the fundamental ingredient of beach sand, is the most common element to build semiconductors and microchips. Silicon itself is not a good conductor of electricity. So, the doping process is used to control the flow of electric current as desired. Before silicon chips can be built, silicon is turned into a silicon wafer, which begins with the growth of silicon ingot. Silicon crystal’s atom is in a three-dimensional periodic pattern. A polysilicon crystal is formed by many single silicon crystals with different orientations because a single crystal alone cannot be used as a semiconductor.
Silicon Wafer: definition and production.
A silicon wafer is a purified thin slice of silicon, mostly formed in a thin disc shape. These are used to make silicon chips.
Image- Czochralski Method (cz)
The process of making a silicon wafer begins with the purification of silicon, then it is melted and cooled to form ingots. Most of the Ingot is grown using the Czochralski (CZ) method.
As the ingot has reached the desired characteristics, it is time to cut the ingot into tiny slices in the shape of a disc. Wafers are then buffered to get rid of any unwanted impurities accumulated during the slicing process. The cleaning process is also an important step, so many measures are taken care of in this process like it is held in a clean room. By clean room, it means with the least number of particles per cubic foot. To maintain the cleanliness, workers wear a clean suit, then they are blown by fans and sprayed with harmless chemicals which helps to make sure that they do not carry any unwanted particles accumulated before entering the rooms.
Good quality wafers go through a polishing process many times. The polishing process has two steps which are stock removal and chemical mechanical polish. Both steps use polishing pads and fine polishing slurry. The stock removal process removes a very thin layer of silicon and is necessary to produce a wafer surface that is damage-free. On the other hand, the final polish does not remove any material. During the stock removal process, a haze forms on the surface of the wafer, so an extra polishing step gives the wafer a mirror finish. After polishing the silicon wafers are sent to final cleaning, a long series of clean baths is done, to be sure there is no residue.
Silicon chips:
A silicon chip is an integrated circuit that serves as the primary component of all computing devices. Silicon chips are complex devices that perform as the brain of every computing device.
Silicon chips may look flat but they may be built of many layers of complex and integrated circuits. Chips are built simultaneously in a grid formation on the wafer surface in a “fabrication facility” or “fab.” A wafer is marked out into a small identical rectangular zone that serves as an individual component of the chip.
Ultimately, the way the chip works depends on the result of how the transistors and gates are designed. Designing a chip may include specifying the number of transistors, chip size, production factor and interconnections that control the flow of electric current through the chip. The ingredients used for the chip depends on for what purpose the chip is going to be used. Making a chip is a complicated process so it requires many steps that are precisely controlled, resulting in layered patterns of various materials built one on top of the other. A photolithographic "printing" process is used to form a chip’s multilayered transistors and interconnects (electrical circuits) on a wafer.
Image- Photolithographic printing
Hundreds of identical processors are created in a batch on a single silicon wafer. Once all the layers are completed, a process called wafer sort is performed. The testing helps to ensure that the chips perfectly perform as desired design. After the fabrication is over, the wafer is cut into individual pieces called a die. The die is the chip that is ready to be deployed in the computer, smartphone, and other electrical device by adding a substrate and heat spreader like thermal paste.
How long will the silicon shortage last?
Reinhard Ploss told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” last week that it is “very clear it will take time” until supply and demand are rebalanced. “I think two years is too long, but we will definitely see it reaching out to 2022,” he said. “I think additional capacity is going to come … I expect a more balanced situation in the next calendar year.”
Glenn O’Donnell, a vice president research director at advisory firm Forrester, believes the shortage could last until 2023. “Because demand will remain high and supply will remain constrained, we expect this shortage to last through 2022 and into 2023,” he wrote in a blog.
Patrick Armstrong, CIO of Plurimi Investment Managers, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” last week, that he thinks the chip shortage will last 18 months. “It’s not just autos. Its’ phones. It is the internet of everything. There’s so many goods now that have many more chips than they ever did in the past,” he said. “They’re all internet enabled.”
Source- CNBC
It is clear that the global silicon shortage is not going to be over any time soon now and according to many analysts, it can last till 2022 or 2023.
Conclusion:
The world is going through a pandemic situation which hindered almost everything. Many industries are affected by it, the global economy is disturbed, the prices of products are reaching sky high. The Global silicon shortage is also a good example. All the companies producing devices using silicon chips had cancelled their orders because of no demand for products in the market such as the automobile industry. But with the regaining stability in the global economy, it was worse for the silicon chip manufacturing companies. The huge bounce in the number of orders of the silicon chip was so high the companies couldn’t cope up with it. This led the global silicon industry to fall into a negative spiral. By probing the present conditions and listening to what analysts say it is safe to say that the global silicon shortage may take time to cure and may last till 2022 or 2023.
The world will regain its strength, the global economy will regain its growth, everything will be fine, it is just a matter of time, we are in this together. STAY HOME, STAY SAFE.