Semiconductor ecosystem of India

How to make 85,000 jobs in semiconductors a reality?

Introduction:

• India’s dream is that every device in the world will have an Indian-made chip.
• India needs highly qualified trainers with strong domain knowledge and experience to create the talent base for semiconductors.
• To create a strong semiconductor industry, the supply side of critical minerals such as rare earths must be stabilized and dependence on imports reduced significantly.

Countries dominating the semiconductor industry:

• Taiwan produces approximately 50% of the world’s semiconductors, while South Korea is home to a vast network of over 20,000 semiconductor-related companies.
• Despite possessing only 12% of the global manufacturing capacity, U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies hold 40% of the global IC design market share.
• The U.S. leads in providing crucial design automation software and core intellectual property (IP) for chip development.
• S. companies also own and operate the largest wafer fabrication plants, and supply 44% of the global wafer fab equipment.
• Japan, ranked third behind South Korea and Taiwan in the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, accounts for more than 50% of the semiconductor material production market, and around 30% of the equipment-production market.
• China has made significant strides in catching up but continues to rely on foreign suppliers for its most advanced semiconductor needs.
• Rare earths, the key input for semiconductors, and the discovery is startling: China dominates global production of the vast majority of the 17 different rare earth elements, followed by USA, Myanmar, Australia and Thailand.
• India ranks 6th, with rare earths mine production of 2,900 metric tons.

Lagging behind in rare-earth extraction:

• India accounts for 0.83% of global rare earths production, China leads with 68.57%, and the United States ranks a distant second with 12.29%.
• If India must progress towards a greener future, and accelerate energy transition to mitigate climate change, the supply side of critical minerals such as rare earths must be stabilized and dependence on imports reduced significantly.
• In this context, the 2023-24 Economic Survey tabled in the Indian Parliament has identified India’s critical mineral dependence on China as a major concern.
• The alternative is to focus on domestic exploration and production.
• Despite the increased focus on critical mineral exploration, the government is unable to find takers for most of the mineral blocks it is offering for exploration.
• The lack of response from the domestic mining industry primarily due to the unavailability of extraction and processing technologies within India, which turns the focus on skill development and technology upgradation which will help reduce dependence on imports from China.

Thirst for water:

• According to the World Economic Forum, the semiconductor manufacturing process calls for use of ultrapure water to rinse residue from silicon chips during fabrication.
• Ultrapure water, which is thousands of times cleaner than drinking water, is treated through processes such as deionization and reverse osmosis to remove pollutants, minerals and other impurities that can damage chips.
• The downside is it takes around 1,400 to 1,600 gallons of municipal water to make 1,000 gallons of water.
• An average chip manufacturing facility today can use 10 million gallons of ultrapure water per day.

Creating a training ground for semiconductors:

• The scale, size and power rating of the chips can vary from low to high current.
• Materials inside the chips – titanium, gold, aluminum, copper or gold – are used in such minuscule quantity they can be seen only in a microscope.
• India’s current dependency on import of chips indicates that the shortage is not just about materials that we require to manufacture a semiconductor.
• Rare earths is only a start point, we also need composite electronic materials, chemicals and gases.
• Safety protocols must be in place for cylinder pressure, mixtures, piping and labeling.
• In addition, sustained critical super-purified (de-ionized) water supply, along with high degree surge-protected 24 x 7 power supply and hi-precision overload protection units across the spectrum of chip manufacturing equipment are among fundamentally necessary features.
• This brings us back to the need for training of personnel by trainers with excellent domain knowledge and experience.
• A tremendous opportunity exists in India for skilling, upskilling and reskilling.
• Companies, domestic and foreign, can express satisfaction with infrastructure available in India, and will appreciate the Production Linked Incentive schemes being rolled out by state governments.
• All this will succeed only when we have trained manpower for the semiconductor industry.
• India currently accounts for 20% of global semiconductor design talent.
• The central government has introduced the Chips to Startup (C2S) programme, aimed to train 85,000 engineers qualified in Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) over five years.
• Even more encouraging is the government’s setting up of ‘India Semiconductor Mission’ and its commitment of Rs. 2,30,000 crores to position India as a global hub for electronics manufacturing with semiconductors as the foundational building block.

A shift to productizing technology:

• To emerge as a nation with tangible products, to keep pace or to stay ahead of the global race for semiconductors, India must work on the following: International certifications are essential to be able to access lucrative overseas markets.
• Currently, Indian companies must reach out to international agencies for product certification.
• Empowering Indian agencies such as Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate and encouraging private players in this area would open doors to domestic certification.
• Design-Linked and Production-Linked Incentive Schemes can be enhanced with projects with a larger outlay.
• Seamless procedures will make the schemes even more effective.
• On the usage side, India must encourage domestic Electronics Manufacturing Services manufacturers to use locally sourced chips.
• This could take the form of subsidies and negative import lists.

Conclusion:

• The vibrant semiconductor ecosystem, a bouquet of incentives, and the prevailing impetus to ‘Make in India’ augur well for a niche vertical that can help achieve our collective goal of swifter communications, lower vehicular emissions, cleaner factories, and a healthier populace.
• A speedy rollout of steps can take us towards that.

New genus of jumping spiders ‘Tenkana’ discovered in south India

News:

• A team of arachnologists has discovered a new genus of jumping spiders, ‘Tenkana’, found across southern India, encompassing two previously known species.
• It also introduced a new species, Tenkana jayamangali, from Karnataka.

More info:

• The name Tenkana comes from the Kannada word for south, reflecting that all the known species are from southern India and northern Sri Lanka.
• This new group belongs to the Plexippina subtribe of jumping spiders and is different from related groups such as Hyllus and Telamonia.
• Unlike related species that live in forests, Tenkana spiders prefer drier areas and ground habitats.
• They have been found in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
• Two species that were previously in Colopsus – Tenkana manu (found in south India and Sri Lanka) and Tenkana arkavathi (from Karnataka) – have now been moved to the new genus.
• The team also described Tenkana jayamangali for the first time, named after the Jayamangali river in Karnataka, where it was first seen.

Space rocks

Context:

• New research shows most space rocks crashing into Earth come from a single source

Introduction:

• Each year, roughly 17,000 fireballs from space enter Earth’s atmosphere.
• Scientists know that while some of these meteorites come from the Moon and Mars, the majority come from asteroids.

Meteorite:

• Only when a fireball reaches Earth’s surface is it called a meteorite.
• Meteorites are commonly designated as three types: stony meteorites, iron meteorites, and stony-iron meteorites.
• Stony meteorites come in two types.
• The most common are the chondrites, which have round objects inside that appear to have formed as melt droplets.
• These comprise 85% of all meteorites found on Earth.
• Most are known as “ordinary chondrites”.
• They are then divided into three broad classes – H, L and LL – based on the iron content of the meteorites and the distribution of iron and magnesium in the major minerals olivine and pyroxene.
• These silicate minerals are the mineral building blocks of our Solar System and are common on Earth, being present in basalt.
• “Carbonaceous chondrites” are a distinct group.
• They contain high amounts of water in clay minerals, and organic materials such as amino acids.
• Chondrites have never been melted and are direct samples of the dust that originally formed the solar system.
• The less common of the two types of stony meteorites are the so-called “achondrites”.
• These do not have the distinctive round particles of chondrites, because they experienced melting on planetary bodies.

Asteroid belt:

• Asteroids are the primary sources of meteorites.
• Most asteroids reside in a dense belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• The asteroid belt itself consists of millions of asteroids swept around and marshalled by the gravitational force of Jupiter.
• The interactions with Jupiter can perturb asteroid orbits and cause collisions.
• This results in debris, which can aggregate into rubble pile asteroids.
• These then take on lives of their own.
• It is asteroids of this type which the recent Hayabusa and Osiris-REx missions visited and returned samples from.
• These missions established the connection between distinct asteroid types and the meteorites that fall to Earth.
• S-class asteroids (akin to stony meteorites) are found on the inner regions of the belt, while C-class carbonaceous asteroids (akin to carbonaceous chondrites) are more commonly found in the outer regions of the belt.
• But, as the studies show, we can relate a specific meteorite type to its specific source asteroid in the main belt.

One family of asteroids:

• The two new studies place the sources of ordinary chondrite types into specific asteroid families – and most likely specific asteroids.
• This work requires painstaking back-tracking of meteoroid trajectories, observations of individual asteroids, and detailed modelling of the orbital evolution of parent bodies.
• One of the study reports that ordinary chondrites originate from collisions between asteroids larger than 30 kilometres in diameter that occurred less than 30 million years ago.
• The Koronis and Massalia asteroid families provide appropriate body sizes and are in a position that leads to material falling to Earth, based on detailed computer modelling.
• Of these families, asteroids Koronis and Karin are likely the dominant sources of H chondrites.
• Massalia (L) and Flora (LL) families are by far the main sources of L- and LL-like meteorites.
• The above study further documents the origin of L chondrite meteorites from Massalia.
• It compiled spectroscopic data – that is, characteristic light intensities which can be fingerprints of different molecules – of asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• This showed that the composition of L chondrite meteorites on Earth is very similar to that of the Massalia family of asteroids.
• The scientists then used computer modelling to show an asteroid collision that occurred roughly 470 million years ago formed the Massalia family.
• Serendipitously, this collision also resulted in abundant fossil meteorites in Ordovician limestones in Sweden.
• In determining the source asteroid body, these reports provide the foundations for missions to visit the asteroids responsible for the most common outerspace visitors to Earth.
• In understanding these source asteroids, we can view the events that shaped our planetary system.

India’s fourth nuclear submarine launched into water

News:

• India’s fourth nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), referred to as S4*, was launched into water.

More info:

• This submarine is bigger and more capable than the first, INS Arihant (S2), which is essentially a technology demonstrator developed under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme.
• India currently has two SSBNs operational.
• INS Arihant was quietly commissioned into service in 2016.
• It has a displacement of 6,000 tonnes and is powered by an 83 MW pressurised light-water reactor with enriched uranium.
• The second SSBN, INS Arighaat (S3), which retains the same reactor and dimensions with several technological upgrades, was commissioned end-August.
• The 3rd SSBN Aridhman (S4) is currently undergoing sea trials and is expected to be commissioned, into service next year.
• The first two SSBNs share the same reactor, while the S4 and S4* have an improved reactor.
• The S4* is bigger and can carry a number of the K-4 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).
• Earlier this month, the Cabinet Committee on Security approved the construction of two indigenous nuclear attack submarines (SSN), also called hunter-killers, a critical requirement for the Indian Navy to monitor the Indo-Pacific.
• INS Arihant is presently armed with a 750km range K-15 SLBM.
• The S4* carries the advanced 3,500 km range SLBM K-4 that was tested for the first time in 2020.
• The K-4 will be the mainstay of India’s undersea nuclear deterrence as it provides standoff capability to launch nuclear weapons while submerged in Indian waters until a 5,000 km range SLBM is developed and fielded.
• A robust, survivable, and assured retaliatory capability is in line with India’s policy to have ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence’ (CMD) that underpins its ‘No First Use’ commitment.
• In 1998, India conducted nuclear tests under Phokran-II, and in 2003, India declared its nuclear doctrine based on CMD and a NFU policy while reserving the right of massive retaliation if struck with nuclear weapons first.