We all know we live in a highly interconnected world.\u00a0 News travels at the speed of the internet, and a huge number of goods and services compete on a global scale.\u00a0 But who\u2019d have thought that the war in Ukraine would be significantly impacting semiconductor manufacturing, and lithography in particular?<\/p>\n
Because of this, I\u2019ve learned far more about neon than I thought I ever would.<\/p>\n
Yes, neon, noble gas, element number 10.\u00a0 70% of neon production comes from Ukraine and Russia (one company, Iceblick, makes 60% of the world\u2019s supply, and all of that goes through its plant in Odessa).\u00a0 Neon is a byproduct of steel production, but because it is a rare component of the waste gases, it only makes sense to recover it at extremely large steel plants.\u00a0 This is where Ukraine and Russia come in, since they still operate the old-style massive manufacturing plants that have long since disappeared from Western countries.<\/p>\n
But why is neon important in lithography?\u00a0 Excimer lasers use gases like KrF and ArF to generate light, and those gases are regularly changed out during use.\u00a0 But a charge of excimer laser gas is actually about 98% neon, a carrier gas that is essential to the laser\u2019s operation.\u00a0 With the Russian-supported separatists fighting in the Ukraine, supplies have become highly constrained.\u00a0 The price of neon has increased 6X in the last year, to about $1\/liter, but worse yet there are shortages.\u00a0 And since a fairly large share of the world\u2019s consumption of neon is used for excimer lasers, this has got the excimer companies worried, and their semiconductor customers as well.<\/p>\n