[sushibowl]

There's a paper on the subject here: https://osf.io/d6ar4/

Seems like the primary benefit comes to silicon wafer manufacturing. Growing pure silicon crystal is much easier to do in a microgravity, vacuum environment:

> The study reported that for semiconductor crystals processed in LEO compared to terrestrial samples, more than 80 percent improved in either one or a combination of structure, uniformity, reduction of defects, and/or electrical and optical properties–and some by orders of magnitude

For actual device manufacturing, there are potential benefits as well, but this is less well researched area (possibly as a result of the difficulty of getting advanced IC manufacturing equipment into earth orbit).

[adgjlsfhk1]

I do somewhat doubt that the economics would work out. Silicon wafers are expensive, but I'm not sure if the price is currently higher than that of launching a bunch of sand to low earth orbit.

[kiba]

You wouldn't launch sands to LEO, but the equipment used for bootstrapping a mining operation on the moon or asteroid.

[pixl97]

I think the point is you'd be able to build products in space that you cannot build on Earth for any cost currently.