TSMC: You know what would be fab? Some local neon supplies

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC is reported to be seeking local sources of neon gas for use in its fabs, following disruptions to global supply chains caused by the Russian war in Ukraine. The semiconductor manufacturing giant is taking steps to shore up its supply chain following recent events, according to Nikkei Asia, citing TSMC' …

[Claverhouse]

Blast from the Past

So there was I considering this was about manufacturers facing difficulty in making Nixie Tubes, and President Putin demonically cutting the supply of gas...

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Re: Blast from the Past

It's part of Putin's diabolical scheme to get the world to finance the war by purchasing IN-14 & ZM1177 Nixies from Russia to crack open for their neon.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Blast from the Past

Excellent - two posts both making the same points I was going to. Though I do prefer the delightful ZM1210 to those nasty upside-down 2s the Russians used.

[Sceptic Tank]

No more buying from them Neon Nazis

So, excimer, huh ....

(Even this FireFoxx spellchecker flagged that as a typo).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No more buying from them Neon Nazis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excimer_laser

[that one in the corner]

Re: No more buying from them Neon Nazis

As that link says, UV laser, also used for eye surgery. Brief double take at the picture on that page, showing a generic (?) excimer laser - with two sets of binocular eyepieces! Get yer eyes done 'ere, buy work on one pair, second pair lasered for free.

[Jan 0]

Now if only the Register had a correspondent who understood the production, use of and markets for Neon.

++Bring Bback us Dabsy too!==

[Bartholomew]

The real problem is dirt cheap Neon ?

It is not like there is a Neon shortage. ~0.001818% in volume of the earth's atmosphere is Neon. The earths atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×10^18 kg. That means that there is approximately ~93,627,000,000,000 kg (~206,412,202,215,835 lb) of Neon in the atmosphere.

The real problem is that you need active markets to buy all the components: Liquid Nitrogen (~78.084%), Liquid Oxygen (~20.946%), Argon (~0.9340%), Carbon dioxide (~0.0417%), Neon (~0.001818%), Helium (~0.000524%), Methane (~0.000187%), Krypton (~0.000114%), Hydrogen (~0.000055%), Xenon (~0.000005%), ....

Liquefaction of Air using the Joule–Thomson effect (1852) can happen pretty much anywhere on earth, but is not exactly cheap so, you need to sell everything at the rate it is being produced. So Taiwan needs large local markets for primarily for Liquid Nitrogen, Liquid Oxygen and Argon. Everything else produced is at a low enough volume (and a high enough profit margin) that it can be stored indefinitely if needed.