THE CRUNCH
Gigaphoton, the Japanese lithography laser maker, has unveiled a neon gas recycling system called hTGM for its argon fluoride (ArF) excimer lasers, the light sources used in deep ultraviolet (DUV) chipmaking. The company says the system has demonstrated a 50% recycling rate and hopes adjusted configurations can improve that dramatically, according to reporting by Tom's Hardware citing Business Wire. Gigaphoton also claims a single hTGM unit can cut neon consumption by up to 470 kilolitres a year, trimming material costs and reliance on a supply chain that has been unstable since 2022.
The context is the neon supply shock that followed Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, Ukraine supplied up to half of the neon used by the chip industry, and its refiners shutting down exposed how concentrated the supply was. Lithography accounts for roughly 70% of global neon use, mostly in advanced DUV processes, though EUV lithography avoids neon entirely by using a tin-plasma laser instead. South Korea, Taiwan and China have since built domestic production and in-fab recycling, and Samsung and SK Hynix adopted neon recycling in 2024.
A 50% recovery rate is not new territory: Cymer demonstrated the same efficiency back in 2015, Gigaphoton's own testing suggested ArF recovery could exceed 90% as early as 2017, and Kanken Techno has recently shown a system above 90%, so the figure looks more like a starting point than a ceiling. Gigaphoton previously offered recycling for its KrF lasers, and extending it to ArF lasers closes that gap. Kanken Techno, which works with both major ArF laser developers, is still going through certification.