How does the panfemia affect the availability and price of electronic components - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: luiHS
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2021, 03:40:16 pm
content: Since the pandemic started, I have found that TFT screens have doubled in price and are in short supply.I'm also having trouble getting accelerometers, specifically the LSM9DS1 from ST. They also do not have in Mouser any reference of accelerometers made for ST.I get in touch with ST to find out what happens and when they go back to manufacturing, and they don't answer me anything concrete, they wander and they don't respond with at least one real reason for what happens.Does anyone know what happens, why certain electronic components are scarce and expensive?

author: station240
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 25, 2021, 10:18:58 pm
content: MEMS accelerometers use a similar production process to some other types of MEMS sensors, and are made on the same production lines.list below swiped fromhttps://www.electronicshub.org/mems-sensors/* Accelerometers* Inertial Measurement Units or IMU (they are combination of MEMS Accelerometer and MEMS Gyroscope)* Magnetometer* Pressure and Inertial Sensor*Pressure Sensor*Airflow Sensor* Fuel Sensor* Impact and Crash Sensor* MEMS Microphone*Temperature SensorMost of those are in demand from the car industry, worse still the ones in bold are used in the Medical Industry.So the reason you can't get an accelerometer is because new non-contact temperature meters and artificial ventilators are more important.Oh and ST had entirely justified strike action last year, because they made record profits and offered their workers a below inflation payrise (because corporate grade stupid), so parts weren't getting ordered.As for the TFTs, every city in China has one or more things they specialize in, Wuhan was Semiconductor wafer production machines. Suffice to say various plans to build new chinese semiconductor plants collapsed.Then there are the two semiconductor fabs in Texas that lost power, and one Renesas plant in Japan that got shutdown by an earthquake and then had a fire a month later.Supply chain is a huge mess at the moment, automotive is the hardest hit by those 3 fabs being out of action.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2021, 10:30:35 pm
content: We've found it nearly impossible to get ahold of IMUs, accelerometers are probably also squeezed.One Bosch part came back with lead times of 100 weeks from a major distributor, and grey market sources quoting $50/part (for normally $6/part at 100 off.)I'm not exactly sure what the cause of this is. The Bosch rep suggested that there was a lot of demand for the parts as more AR/VR kit is coming onto the market, made ever popular by people spending more time at home. Personally I think a secondary factor is the fabs will need to implement more social distancing and perhaps time between shifts, plus any COVID cases will require self isolation. So you have a demand spike at the time when fabs are going to struggle to increase or maintain capacity. Combine this with a worldwide shortage of fab capacity in general because of the automotive market shitting the bed, and manufacturers panic-buying parts to desperately shore up supply, and you have the perfect storm.