China is banning exports of gallium and germanium, rare earth metals used to make advanced semiconductors needed to train AI models.
Sigh.
#Although as it’s in a Billy Hague column it has the advantage of only being wrong.
China is banning exports of gallium and germanium, rare earth metals used to make advanced semiconductors needed to train AI models.
Sigh.
#Although as it’s in a Billy Hague column it has the advantage of only being wrong.
Neither gallium nor germanium are used in huge quantities in the semiconductor industry. Gallium is used in gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. These are used for radio frequency components in the cell phone industry. GaN is also used in high speed switching power supplies, usually as a thin layer on a silicon carbide substrate. It is also used for LED light bulbs.
Germanium is used mainly in silicon germanium high speed signal processing chips. It is used as a microscopically thin layer on silicon wafers, so the amount of germanium used is very small.
The main industrial bottleneck for these applications is that they need to be extremely pure. There are a very limited number of suppliers for semiconductor grade materials. It is also difficult to set up a high purity process overnight.
I know, I know, bought and sold both in my time. Hundreds of tonnes each globally per years as the total market, not just the semiconductor one. They#re also near trivially easy to source in rough form – before the, as you say, difficult very pure part.
I expect all these brilliant chemists john77 reckons the UK’s universities harbour, can help us there.
If they’re not all Chinese of course.
Incidentally: William Hague – PPE Oxford.
Didn’t really need to look it up, did I?
They’re rare but they aren’t rare earths. Must have confused Hague who is short but he ain’t shortbread.
As BiS alludes, Hague’s tenuous acquaintance with science probably dates to the hated ‘stinks’ classes at whatever seat of buggering is his almer mater.
Ironically, the major source of germanium is…….coal ash.
No coal-burning power stations, no germanium.
It’s one reason why China is such an important source nowadays.
And that’s kindly passing over the foolish lad’s AI reference.
Hmm, no, not quite. Fly ash is a source, yes. So is spharelite (the major zinc ore). But you don’t just process random fly ash. You can, sure, with lower margins. Rather, you go to coal plants which burn coal from certain Ge high specific coals. There’s one in Vorkuta (not a current source) which is 1kg per tonne coal Ge, which means the fly ash is 10kg per tonne. Ge is some $1500 a kf these days but obviously there are extraction costs. That major Chinese source is one specific coal plant that burns local coal. Which is high Ge. In fact so the story has it (not checked it) the coal is so high in Ge that they give the power away for free to the local city. There’s a big factory in Belgium which can also process Ge out of the right sort of concentrate produced from fly ash…..
@TtC There’s cubic miles of that dumped around the UK.
OT but metals related. Also rationing related. They are revealing themselves.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-12307629/Kill-electric-SUVs-fewer-journeys-road-cut-demand-critical-metals.html
“We must kill off large electric SUVs and make fewer private car journeys to cut demand on critical metals,”
I love this we must stuff. Fuck off in the electric car you just rode in on seems the appropriate response.
BiS. You are reminding me of the useless shit light bulbs they produce these days.
I might as well add that such very limited experience as I’ve had with AI doesn’t convince me that it’s about to take over the world just yet.
Doubt they’d get very far. If they rode in on an milk float they probably used up most of its range getting here.
Does he get a prize for the highest number of inaccurate facts in a short sentence?
“I shall now leczure you on ze need to abandon your vehicle!. But firzt! Do you have ze socket available so I can charze my ecologically zustainable transport zat rubs ze Ego ?”
Remember kids.. Python was satire, not a manual… 😉
“I shall now leczure you on ze need to abandon your vehicle!. But firzt! Do you have ze socket available so I can charze my ecologically zustainable transport zat rubs ze Ego ?”
Spain has (or at least has until Monday morning, por favor Dio!) much the same electric car ambitions as the UK. I’m looking at where they took the three storey building opposite me down to rebuild as an apartment block. There’s a bunch of cables hanging from rope across the site. Various diameters from an inch & a half down to domestic 2.5mm. That’s how much of Spain’s cities & towns are wired up. Cables haphazardly stapled to the walls of buildings. Dwellings with only 6 Amps of supply are common. Power cuts are monotonously regular. How they think that mess will take the load of charging even a single car beats me.
BiS,
It won’t take the load. That’s the point. No cars for the peasants. That is the policy aim.
UK grid won’t cope either, one electric car in the street is not a problem, every car in the street charging overnight……