Air Liquide has signed several new multi-year contracts worth more than €50m ($59m) and has been supplying xenon and krypton to the semiconductor and the satellite industries in three regions – Europe, US and Asia – since the beginning of 2018.
The Tier One corporation’s customers benefit from Air Liquide’s global logistics organisation deployed in 30 countries, which enables the delivery of these high value-added molecules, extracted from air gases in the Group’s large production facilities.
The semiconductor industry uses xenon or krypton in its new processes to produce high-end flash memories at a lower cost, supporting the increasing need to store and move massive quantities of data.
In the space industry, the all-electric propulsion satellites also use xenon. The all-electric propulsion is based on the energy produced by the satellite’s solar panels to accelerate and eject a gas (xenon) resulting in the motion of the satellite generated by the thrust. All-electric engines reduce the satellite’s weight by about 35%, greatly reducing launching costs. In the coming years, at least half of the market is expected to adopt this technology.
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