Inert Gas Use in Semiconductor Technology

While the semiconductor manufacturing often evokes images of robotic arms stamping chips, the manufacturing processes of silicon technology is more chemical than it is mechanical. Simply put, creating semiconductors requires impeccably precise placement of materials with special conductive properties onto a silicon wafer to manage the flow of electric current.

Many of the chemical processes needed to create and affix semiconductors to the silicon substrate require an environment free of atmospheric gasses like oxygen or nitrogen that can undermine the reactions necessary to create semiconductor crystals. To create an environment free of these gasses, semiconductor manufacturers use gas argon, an inert gas, to shield certain processes from atmospheric gasses. By purging a closed environment around the substrate with argon, manufacturers eliminate air and are able to form and affix the semiconductor crystals necessary to create processing chips, solar panels, etc.

For affixing semiconductor components, argon is also pivotal. As a shielding gas, it provides an environment in which a weld-head can perform precise and consistently high-quality welds because it keeps the arc length constant, whereas atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen cause inconsistency in arc length that results in fusion defects and porosity.

Because of its safety to human clean-room workers, its affordability (it is a co-product of oxygen and nitrogen production and the third most abundant atmospheric gas), and its availability, gas argon is indispensable in the semiconductor manufacturing process, wherein cylinder, valves, and and other components need to be purged of various gasses.

As a purge gas, argon not only produces the low-oxygen or low-nitrogen environment needed to create semiconductors. It is also useful for keeping operations safe – for purging potentially harmful gasses from equipment so that different gasses can be used in the same delivery system without any reaction or without any fear of potentially harmful gasses finding their way into the production environment.

While we are far more likely to hear about atmospheric carbon dioxide than argon, the latter is just as much an unsung hero of our technological era as the former is a nemesis. Without affordable inert gasses for use in the production of semiconductor crystals and GTA, many of the technologies we take for granted – computers, cell phones, etc. – would be even more difficult and complex to manufacture, if not impossible to create. As an affordable and inert gas, argon makes so many of the technologies we take for granted possible – something we can breathe easily about.