Turning The Thar Desert Into A Semiconductor Paradise Could Require More Than Potential, In Particularly Billions Of Dollars In Investment In Order To Make Pakistan A Competitive Semi Conductor Market
According to Pediastan, “the Sindh Department of Information Technology and experts declared Thar sand as the most suitable for making computer chips. The ambitious proposal envisions a $450 million chip wafer foundry in the heart of the desert — a plan that could position Pakistan among nations competing for a share of the booming semiconductor market.”
The process from sand to a semiconductor is complicated but extraordinary. Firstly, silicon is separated from all other materials in the sand. The processing repeats several times until the manufacturer creates a 99.9999% pure sample. The purified silicon is then poured to form a cylindrical electronic-grade ingot. The cylinder’s diameter is 300mm and weighs about 100kg. The manufacturer then slices the ingot into 925-micrometer-thin wafers.
According to Pediastan, “these wafers then undergo photolithography, material deposition, and etching to create billions of transistors. Processor manufacturing takes two and a half to three months of 24/7 processes. The entire production chain requires over 300 individual steps and some of the most controlled manufacturing environments on Earth.”
In the context of the emerging semi conductor market in Pakistan, the provincial IT department has submitted plans for producing silicon chip wafer foundry to the federal and Sindh governments. The estimated cost of the plan is $450 million, and it is expected that the plan will be added to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) programme, in particularly the much awaited CPEC 2.0 which was officially unveiled in March of this year. This will transform the largely abandoned Thar desert into a leading technological industry for semiconductor production.
Like this article? Read our previous technology-focused article here.
