BBC report: Spruce Pine’s high-quality quartz is at heart of billion-dollar computer chip industry

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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The BBC has the story. We all know about the great mining in our mountains, but this story really puts it in context:

Spruce Pine, a modest, charmingly low-key town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, is at the heart of a global billion-dollar industry.

Although this Mitchell County community calls itself the Mineral City, with just 2,000 residents one could dispute the city status. But when it comes to minerals, Spruce Pine has definitely undersold itself.

The jewellery shops, highlighting local emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, hint at the riches. The mountains, however, contain something far more precious than gemstones: they are a source of high-purity quartz.

This ultra-pure mineral is essential for building most of the world’s silicon chips – without which you wouldn’t be reading this article.

Geologist Alex Glover, of Active Minerals International, drove me to a disused mine to see this quartz for myself. Our jeep bumped across dried creek beds for miles until we reached two cathedral-like caverns of rock at Hoot Owl mine.

The rocks contain feldspar, silvery flakes of mica, flashes of garnet and smoky veins of quartz. “Fifty years ago men were throwing away the quartz,” explained Mr Glover.

“But now it’s prized and quartz is the high value item. These are the only places that this quartz is found on the planet.”

Spruce Pine quartz is considered the best in the world and can sell for up to $50,000 (£30,000) a tonne.

It is made, like all quartz, of silicon and oxygen but the process of making a computer chip does not rely on its silicon; that can be obtained from common sand.

The clue to why quartz is needed is in the process of making a silicon wafer. These wafers are CD-sized slices of silicon upon which the chips are then etched with electronic circuitry.