Doug Meerschaert wrote:
> > But then I WOULD argue about the materials cost. The silicon in that wafer
> > costs a tiny fraction of a cent when it's in the form of sand.
>
> And purified silicon ready for production?
As someone from the Chemical industry, if you really want to know I can
find out within a few days. I have a friend that works at Hemlock
Semiconductor <http://www.hscpoly.com/> (the worlds largest manufacturer
of these materials [polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon),
silicontetrachloride (SiCl4), dichlorosilane (H2SiCl2), trichlorosilane
(HSiCl3), and silicontetrachloride (SiCl4)]), a wholly owned subsidiary
of the Dow Corning Corporation, which in turn is owned 50% by Dow
Chemical Company (which I had worked for for a while) and 50% by Corning
Corporation.
The production of these materials is EXTREMELY energy intensive.
Hemlock Semiconductor is the largest single customer of Consumers
Energy, which is, in turn the second largest utility company in the
state of Michigan (after Detroit Edison). The small Hemlock plant
(about 350 people?) uses more electricity than the Dow Chemical facility
in Midland Michigan about 30 miles to the north. Which is huge,
employing about 4,000 people directly, and another 4,000 indirectly
within the facility (which is comprised of 47 individual chemical
plants), and covers nearly 5 square miles, as well as producing about
$3,500,000,000 of products per year (yes that is $3.5 BILLION).
And you have to remember that Michigan is home to the auto industry as
well, which is known for some of the largest single manufacturing sites
in the world (Buick City plant in Flint, the Olds plants in Lansing,
Ford's River Rouge Plant (makes the Dow Chemical plant even look small),
Pontiac in Pontiac, Cadillac in Detroit, Chrysler in Detroit, etc). We
are talking factories the size of small cities and employing thousands.
And yet, Hemlock Semiconductor out strips most of them in the use of
electricity (Ford's River Rouge Plant may use more electricity, but then
it is a Detroit Edison customer). Consumers Energy was in the process
of building a Nuclear Power Plant in Midland to supply the Hemlock
Semiconductor, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Buick City Plant, and the GM
foundries in Saginaw (all within about 100 miles), but finally ditched
the effort after spending over $1 billion trying to satisfy the
environmentalist's paranoia, needless to say the people of Michigan are
still (and will be for quite some time) paying the bill for that fiasco.
Like I say, if you really want to know I can try to get a hold of some
current costs. From what that friend of mine was telling me about 2
years ago, they where getting about (and I could be off on this, as it
has been a while so I can not guarantee the accuracy of these numbers by
any means) $25,000 per ounce for the 99.9999% pure crystals.
That's a BIG difference from the couple of cents a pound for "good"
sand.
So for manufacturing costs, you can not make generalizations about such
things without knowing a little about how it is produced. By the way,
the figure of about 30% of cost for the raw materials for a car is also
way off. For cars it is more like 8% for raw materials, and about 15%
for the processing of those raw materials, and the markup on cars is no
where near the 50% that you often see on many other retail items.
Markup is more like 15% to 20% for autos.
--
Aaron Smalley
ICQ#: 2080100
Home: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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