False. It is the second most common element on Earth after Oxygen.

* Gold is used in the chip bonding process.
* Diamond is sometimes the cutting utensil to cut wafers.
* Copper/Aluminum for the chip wire/routing/pathways.
* Germanium, argon, hydrogen, helium, fluorine, nitrogen, arsenic, antimony, phosphorus, arsine, phosphine, silane, tungsten hexafluride, hydrogen peroxide, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrofluric acid and probably a heap more are used in various stages of chip manufacturing.

Silicon found at the beach is also not 99.99999% pure like that found in microprocessors. Tomato to Potato comparison.

I think you might be confused.

They aren't making wafers. They are making chips.
To make chips, you need wafers.

And another factory makes the wafers before sending them to the likes of TSMC foundry.

So in short... If you cannot supply enough Wafers, it doesn't matter how many foundries TSMC builds, it will still be bottlenecked.

Either way... This stems from my prior predictions years ago that whilst 2023-2024 will see an easing of chip shortages, they will continue for some time.

While sand is indeed used for silicon chips (among a myriad of other things), the overwhelming majority of it is used in concrete for construction.  The increased demand you are seeing has nothing to do with the semiconductor shortage.  Sand is being overharvested (50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel per year) due to the world population quadrupling since 1950 requiring the construction of new homes, buildings, roads, etc.  Some nations are also frivolously wasting the resource to artificially extend coast lines and create artificial islands to build luxury resorts.  Sand mining and extraction has been carried to such an extreme that it has already lead to riverbank collapses, bridge collapses, coastal coral reef damage, destruction of coastal wetlands, and fish & bird habitats.  So, I wouldn't be so quick to celebrate an increase of sand mining just because you think it might get more video game consoles produced.

Why the world is running out of sand

This thread is about Sumco Corporation.

They make wafer ingots, not chips.

"Tomato to Potato comparison" ????

Nobody says that Sumco shovels sand from Japanese beaches into its factories.

Oh I’m not someone that’s celebrating.  I was curious about what industries could be demanding it when locally a sand mine is expanding into a massacre site that has only completed preliminary investigations.

Construction materials make more sense when we don’t really have modern fabs or substrate set ups.