Electronic specialty gases: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Electronic specialty gases such as nitrogen trifluoride, tungsten hexafluoride and ultra-pure nitrogen are sold to chip and display fabs on long contracts. Price reflects purity, supply security and fluorine and helium inputs more than bulk chemical costs.
Proxy US PPI: other industrial gases incl. fluorocarbons index (BLS base period) · monthly, Jun 2009 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for electronic specialty gases itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkElectronic specialty gases and Nitrogen gas
Monthly changes 0.79 strong correlation 12-month changes 0.83 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.90 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jun 2009 to Sep 2026 Electronic specialty gases ≈ 0.0655 × (Nitrogen gas)1.42 R² 0.97 On this fit, a 10% higher nitrogen gas price goes with a 14.5% higher electronic specialty gases price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period) and index (BLS base period).Chart: Electronic specialty gases and Nitrogen gas prices rebased to 100 at Jun 2009, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jun 2009, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Electronic specialty gases price against Nitrogen gas price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2009), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Bulk nitrogen and specialty gases are produced and sold by the same few industrial gas companies, which price both on long contracts with inflation and energy clauses. The two indexes move together closely, at 0.79 for monthly moves and 0.83 for yearly moves.
strong co-movement month to month · 207 months Show chartsNitrogen trifluoride, sulphur hexafluoride and other etch and cleaning gases take their fluorine from fluorspar via hydrogen fluoride. China dominates fluorspar, so its export policy affects fluorinated gas supply, though fluorspar has no public series here.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Hydrogen fluoride is the reactant for most fluorinated electronic gases. Against the inorganic acids proxy, monthly moves correlate at only 0.11 and yearly moves at 0.41, as purification and contract pricing dilute the raw material link.
little or none co-movement month to month · 207 months Show chartsArgon, separated from air alongside nitrogen and oxygen, is used heavily in chip fabs for sputtering and as a shield gas. Despite shared customers, the argon and hydrogen index correlates at just 0.12 monthly and -0.23 yearly, as hydrogen pricing follows gas costs.
little or none co-movement month to month · 207 months Show chartsAI data centres drive demand for advanced chips, and with it the gases used to make them. The data-centre proxy is a commercial power price, so it measures energy cost rather than chip demand, and monthly moves correlate at just 0.11.
little or none co-movement month to month · 207 months Show chartsUltra-pure acids, solvents and specialty gases are bought by the same fabs and qualified together, so they share the chip cycle and the push for local supply in India, the US and Europe. Wet chemicals have no public series.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.