Neon Gas
The rare gas that fires DUV lithography lasers
High-purity neon is essential to the excimer lasers inside DUV lithography scanners, and before 2022 Ukraine supplied roughly half of the world's semiconductor-grade neon (a byproduct of Soviet-era steelmaking, purified by firms like Ingas and Cryoin in Mariupol and Odesa). Russia's 2022 invasion knocked out much of that capacity and spiked prices, exposing a critical single-region dependency. Since then China, the US and others have expanded neon purification, easing but not eliminating the concentration risk into 2025-2026.
Use
DUV excimer laser lithography
Pre-2022 supply
Ukraine ~half of semiconductor-grade neon
2022 shock
War cut Ukrainian output; prices spiked
2025-26 status
Diversified to China/US/Korea; still concentrated
How it fits the stack
Neon Gas with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
Neon Gas in the AI stack. Neon Gas with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 5 entities, 4 relationships
- Neon Gas —supplies→ Ukraine Neon Supply
- ASML Holding —supplies→ Neon Gas
- EUV Lithography (13.5nm) —supplies→ Neon Gas
- Specialty & Electronic Gases —uses→ Neon Gas