Gallium

Your next batch of chips starts with a handful of ash.

Recover gallium and arsenic from combustion ash, combine them into gallium arsenide, and grow the crystals that feed your electronics factory. Each crystal boule presents a choice: slice it into wafers for today's production, or cut it into seeds to expand tomorrow's crystal line.

Gallium adds a semiconductor industry with its own rhythm: bootstrap a seed stock, improve it, and keep enough in reserve to grow again. There are no new ore patches to find. With other material mods, the same factory connects to metal refining, radio electronics, detectors and liquid-metal thermal interfaces. With Space Age, it can take to orbit.

Factorio 2.1.23 or later in the 2.1 series. Space Age and other mods are optional.

What you build

• A recovery line. Collect coal fly ash in an ash-recovery boiler or electric ashing kiln. Purify it, then extract gallium and arsenic separately. Supported ash and metal mods add other sources.
• Other uses for arsenic. Arsenic oxide improves poison-capsule batches and, with a glass provider, glass yields. With Phosphorus, arsenic can replace phosphine in silicon doping.
• A seed economy. Grow crystals in a puller, then send each boule to wafers or seed stock. Wafer slicing sometimes returns a seed; cutting a whole boule gives four. Expanding the factory takes a deliberate investment.
• Better crystals. MK1, MK2 and orbital MK3 boules yield 8, 16 and 32 wafer blanks. Discover better seeds through inspection, or use guaranteed selection recipes. Higher-tier seeds also speed up ground production.
• Useful semiconductors. Finished wafers become processing-unit components and compact solar power. Supported packs use them in existing CPUs, integrated electronics, transceivers and detector assemblies.
• A use for the metal itself. Gallium becomes a thermal contact material for supported electronics and equipment. Add reachable indium and tin production and it becomes Galinstan, a liquid-metal alloy.

A reason to manufacture in space

Space Age gives the chain new sources, machines and customers:

• Vulcanus: recover gallium from local coal ash, synthesize GaAs in the foundry, and collect arsenic oxide from lava-copper flue dust. With Tellurium, one joint lava process supplies both byproducts.
• Fulgora: divert scrap into GaAs feedstock instead of its usual recycling products.
• Gleba: bioleach stone with iron bacteria and water into purified mineral residue. Carbon replaces coal for arsenic reduction, so local semiconductor production can supply rocket parts.
• Platforms: grow MK3 crystals, crush metallic asteroids for supplemental mineral residue, and dry-finish ordinary blanks with asteroid carbon. Bring bootstrap seeds and supplies; expand with asteroid feedstock.
• Specialist machines: foundries synthesize GaAs; EM plants finish wafers, package semiconductors and build both panels; cryogenic plants run Gallium chemistry. Original machines remain available.
• Infinite productivity: red, green, blue, space and electromagnetic science improve refining, GaAs synthesis, scrap recovery and all wafer finishing by 10% per level. Seeds and boules keep fixed yields.
• Aquilo: import gallium or Galinstan for the first cryogenic plant and semiconductor feedstock for quantum processors. Cryogenic machinery can process imports locally.

Space Exploration also provides orbital MK3 growth and uses the materials in its existing solar tiers. Ground-made wafers remain useful throughout the game.

Planet mods

• Paracelsin: Optional zinc purification gives a little purified mineral residue, and tetrahedrite processing gives a little arsenic oxide.

Grow a connected crystal industry

With BZ, Trikop, Timeken and Planetfall/Ashier materials, every crystal has a longer journey. Purify the ash, leach the metals and send gallium arsenide through a suitable foundry. Prepare growth charges, circulate crucibles through the pullers and supply polishing materials to wafer finishing.

Your electronics district now draws on glass, gases, ceramics, solder and mechanical parts from across the factory. The extra stages become part of ordinary production wherever the matching supplies are available.

Fluffy-only games keep their existing recipes, machines and progression, with or without Space Age.

Selector combinators

Selector combinators require one gallium semiconductor package each, alongside their existing decider combinators and advanced circuits. Advanced combinator research gains Gallium crystal growth as a prerequisite at the same blue-science tier. Constant, arithmetic and decider combinators keep their existing recipes. Existing selector factories need the new package supply after updating; research Gallium crystal growth if needed. Packs that hide the standalone package in favor of native electronics do not receive this direct ingredient, and early or cyclic research placements are skipped.

Fits into a larger factory

Integrations use the materials and production routes present in your pack.