NEON GAS

March 20, 2022

The Ukraine-Russia conflict is expected to further impact the already stressed global semiconductor supply as raw material exported from the two countries such as neon gas, chemical C4F6 and palladium are critical for semiconductor manufacturing.

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This has also put the Indian electronics and automobile manufacturing industry in a wait-and-watch mode.
Neon prices had witnessed a tenfold increase during the 2014 Crimean crisis in Ukraine even as the semiconductor industry cut the total usage of the gas by 20% to 40% after adjusting software logic and optimising the purging process of the gas filling procedure.
Two of Ukraine’s leading suppliers of semiconductor-grade neon have halted their operations.
The unavailability of crucial upstream raw materials can have a cascading impact through the supply chain, and impacting especially those manufacturers in Asia, who are reliant on Ukraine.
Ukraine caters to almost 70% of the world’s neon demand and the neon gas is a by-product of Russian steel plants, which is then filtered and supplied by Ukrainian companies.

Neon

Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas.
Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air.

Source : The Hindu