But here’s the thing: while China controls much of the global supply chain of metallic silicon and solar polysilicon, it has yet to crack the manufacturing techniques needed to create wafers for the most advanced silicon chips. In much the same way as it has yet to master the processes Wacker uses to turn out polysilicon with less than one in a billion atoms of impurity, it has not yet refined the Czochralski process enough to produce wafers as perfect as those pulled out of the crucibles at Shin-Etsu. Which is why you or I won’t ever be allowed into this holy of manufacturing holies: for fear
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