Electronic specialty gases
Ultra-high-purity gases (NF3, WF6, fluorocarbons, silane, neon, helium) that clean, etch, deposit and dope chip layers; a $6.3-6.5 billion market with large climate side effects.
Specialty chemicals · Electronic chemicals · No. 70
- Product family
- Feedstock: Minerals and salts
- not published as a tonnage; US sales of neon were about 110 million litres in 2025 (USGS); NF3 is the largest specialty gas by value (indicative)
- 43.0 t CO₂e per t
- HS 281219, 281290
Before 2022, Ukrainian steelworks quietly supplied nearly half the world's neon, a gas chipmakers depend on.
Chart: Illustration: Electronic specialty gases
Where it comes from
Chart: Map of where it comes from
Fluorine gases start from fluorspar and HF; WF6 needs about 0.62 t of tungsten per tonne; neon and xenon are side streams of steelworks air plants.
Three things to know
- Tungsten hexafluoride grew 12% in 2025 because it lays the tungsten word lines inside stacked 3D NAND memory chips.
- Neon makes up just 18 ppm of air, so it is skimmed from giant air separation units at steelworks.
- Helium is a tiny cost: about $6 of it goes into an $18,000 EUV logic wafer in 2026.
The journey
- 1 Raw materialsFluorspar, tungsten, natural gas and air
- 2 SynthesisElectrolysis or fluorination makes NF3, WF6
- 3 PurificationDistilled to 99.999% or purer
- 4 Cylinders, ISOsShipped sealed to chip fab clusters
- 5 Chip fabCleans, etches, deposits and dopes layers