And the deeper one delves, the clearer it is that each of these supply chains is interwoven with another. We are in a web, not a chain. There would be no silicon chips without the roaring coal-fuelled furnaces turning quartzite into metallurgical silicon. There would be no polysilicon without the hydrogen chloride we use to dissolve it and initiate the Siemens process. There would be no semiconductors without the chemicals and gases being pumped up into the cleanroom from the sub-fab level below it.
