The Benefits of Using Rare Gas Neon

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Chemistry in its element: neon

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You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

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Chris Smith

Hello! This week, we meet the element that made the red light district what it is today, well sort of; what you're sure to see is a blaze of neon signs and with the story of how they came to be, here's Victoria Gill.

Victoria Gill

This could be the most captivating element of the periodic table. It's the gas that can give you your name or any word you like, in fact, in light. Neon gas filled the first illuminated science, which were produced almost a Century ago and since then, it has infiltrated language and culture. The word conjures up images of colourful or sometimes rather seedy, glowing science, many of which now don't contain the gas itself. Only the red glow is pure neon, almost every other colour is now produced using argon, mercury and phosphorus in varying proportions, which gives more than a 150 possible colours. Nevertheless, it's neon that's now a generic name for all the glowing tubes that allow advertisers and even many artists to draw and write with light and it was that glow that gave its presence away for the first time. 

Before it was isolated, the space it left in the periodic table was the source of years of frustration. With his discovery of Argon in and the isolation of helium that followed in , the British chemist, Sir William Ramsay had found the first and the third members of the group of inert gases. To fill the gap, he needed to find the second. Finally, in at University College, London, Ramsay and his colleague, Morris Travers modified an experiment they tried previously, they allowed solid argon surrounded by liquid air to evaporate slowly under reduced pressure and collected the gas that came off first. When they put the sample of their newly discovered gas into an atomic spectrometer, heating it up, they were startled by its glowing brilliance. Travers wrote of this discovery, "the blaze of crimson light from the tube told its own story and was a sight to dwell upon and never forget." The name neon comes from the Greek, neos meaning new. It was actually Ramsey's thirteen year old son, who suggested the name for the gas, saying he would like to call it novum from the Latin word for new. His father liked the idea, but preferred to use the Greek. So a new element in name and nature, finally took its place in the periodic table. And initially its lack of reactivity meant there were no obvious uses for Neon. 

It took a bit of imagination from the French engineer, chemist and inventor, Georges Claude, who early in the 20th Century first applied an electric discharge to a sealed tube of neon gas. The red glow it produced, gave Claude the idea of manufacturing a source of light in an entirely new way. He made glass tubes of Neon, which could be used just like light bulbs. Claude displayed the first neon lamp to the public on December 11th, at an exhibition in Paris. His striking display turned heads but unfortunately sold no neon tubes. People simply didn't want to illuminate their homes with red light; but Claude wasn't deterred. He patented his invention in and during his quest to find a use for it he discovered that by bending the tubes, he could make letters that glowed. The use of neon tubes for advertising signs began in , when his company Claude Neon, introduced the gas filled tubular signs to the United States. He sold two to a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. The first neon signs were dubbed 'liquid fire' and people would stop in the street to stare at them, even in daylight, they glow visibly. These days neon is extracted from liquid air by fractional distillation and just a few tons a year of the abundantly available gas is enough to satisfy any commercial needs. And of course there are now many sources of illuminated signs, screens and displays that give us far more impressive scrolling letters and moving pictures that we associate with the bright colourful lights of say Times Square in New York City.

So Neon might have lost some of its unique lustre here on Earth, but further away, it has helped reveal some secretes of the most important glowing object for our planet, the Sun. Solar particles or solar wind also contain Neon in the ratio of two neon isotopes in Moon rock samples, rocks that get blasted by the solar wind for billions of years had until recently baffled scientists. This is because the ratio of the two isotopes varied according to the depths in the rock; with more neon-22 than neon-20 at lower depths. So did this mean that the sun had once been significantly more active than it is today, shooting out higher energy particles that could penetrate deeper into the rocks? This question was finally answered when scientists studied a piece of metallic glass that had been exposed to the solar wind for just two years on the Genesis spacecraft, which crashed to Earth in . When scientists measured the distribution of Neon in the glass samples, exposed to solar wind, they found the top layer also contained more neon-20 than the underlying layer. The underlying layer was similar to the moon rock. Since the activity of the sun was very unlikely to have changed during the two-year mission, it seems that a type of space erosion was causing the discrepancy, micrometeoroids or the particles simply removed some of the original neon from the top surface of the lunar rock.

So may be you should stop and dwell upon the next neon sign you see and just appreciate a truly unique glow.

Chris Smith

So, an element that's as at home in outer space, as it is advertising a brand name here on Earth. That was Victoria Gill with the story of neon. Next time, to the chemical that ironed out the wrinkles in steel making.

For more information, please visit Rare Gas Neon .

Ron Caspi

When Sir Henry Bessemer invented the process of steel making in , his steel broke up when hot rolled or forged; the problem was solved later that year, when Robert Foster Mushet, another Englishman, discovered that adding small amounts of manganese to the molten iron solves the problem. Since manganese has a greater affinity for sulfur than does iron, it converts the low-melting iron sulfide in steel to high-melting manganese sulfide.

Chris Smith

But how did it work, Ron Caspi will be here next week with the story of manganese, the element that makes photosynthesis feasible and gave us an alternative to green glass. That's on next week's Chemistry in its element; I hope you can join us. I'm Chris Smith, thank you for listening and goodbye!

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Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com . There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements

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Despite their high price tags, demand for these rare gases is rising rapidly since numerous industries &#; ranging from electronics and glass fibre through lighting to automotive and aerospace &#; are increasingly harnessing the benefits of noble gases. Similar to oxygen and nitrogen, the rare gases xenon, neon and krypton are also obtained from air using cryogenic separation and purification. For several years now, Linde has been meeting rising demand for these gases by developing innovative plant concepts that boost the capture of rare gases from secondary streams in major air separation plants. 

Neon

Getting the mix right for medical applications.

Best known for its fluorescent capabilities, the noble gas neon (Ne) also plays a key role in ophthalmology. A mixture of neon, fluorine and argon is used during operations on corneas, for example, to correct eyesight via a laser beam. 

A mixture of neon, fluorine, argon and helium gases is used in today&#;s standard cold laser treatments such as excimer lasing. Many of the fluorine, argon and neon gas mixtures produced by Linde go to manufacturers of these kinds of eye laser devices. Excimer lasers, however, are not limited to medical applications. They are also deployed in the electronics industry, for example, in microlithography processes for electronic circuits. Excimer lasers are also used to manufacture mobile displays and drill microscopic holes in the nozzles of inkjet printers.

Krypton

Optimised energy balance in modern buildings.

Krypton (Kr) is a key success factor in energy-saving windows. It is used as a filler gas between insulated glass panes as its low thermal conductivity increases the effectiveness of insulation. 40% or more of all krypton produced worldwide is used for this purpose. 

As with xenon, krypton is also becoming an increasingly important gas in the lighting sector. The car industry, for example, now offers headlights that work with krypton. This rare gas is also used as a filler gas in halogen bulbs, energy-saving bulbs and gas discharge tubes in illuminated billboards. Replacing nitrogen/argon with krypton in halogen energy-saving lamps and fluorescent lamps increases bulb life and produces more effective lighting.

Krypton is also used as sputter gas (ionised form) in the physical vapour deposition (PVD) technique to create thin metallic surface film on materials. This sputter deposition application is used to coat various materials with a thin film on semiconductor devices, glass and food packing materials (eg aluminised PET film for snack bags). Inert argon or xenon can also be used as sputtering gases.

Xenon

Dazzling solutions for the electronics sector.

The extremely rare noble gas xenon (Xe) only accounts for 0.% of air. It is only used where lighter noble gases are not effective. This includes applications such as plasma screens and semiconductors as well as car headlights, camera flashes and anaesthetics. 

The growing popularity of xenon headlights in cars coupled with regulations mandating energy-saving bulbs has sent demand for this gas skyrocketing. Brightness is not the only reason behind the automobile industry&#;s move to xenon lights. Lower energy and fuel consumption was an equally appealing factor. Xenon bulbs can also be used in cinema projectors, light projectors and camera flashes. Xenon accounts for at least 5% of the gas mixture in plasma screens. It is used with neon to fill the many small cells between two glass plates. Every pixel is made up of three of these cells. To create a colour image, each cell is individually charged using a transistor, causing the gas to temporarily ionise and form plasma. 

Xenon is also used in the aerospace industry for ion thrust propulsion, a technology that utilises ion beams to propel space rockets. Put simply, an ion beam is generated by initially ionising xenon and then using an electrical or magnetic field to accelerate the ions. 

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