Krypton is used in a wide variety of applications. These applications take advantage of krypton’s low ionization and high atomic mass.
Much krypton is used for window insulation. It insulates better than argon or air when put between the panes of double or triple pane windows. Krypton provides for lower U-factors (higher R-values) with the same window design. Additionally, krypton offers additional benefits with thin spacings between panes making more high-performance designs possible.
Krypton’s physical and chemical properties make it useful in lighting applications. It is used in incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, and high intensity discharge lamps.
It is a component of excimer laser mixes to produce certain wavelengths. It is a required component in the gas mixes used to produce 222nm (KrCl) and 248nm (KrF) UV.
Krypton is used in sputter deposition, which is a type of physical vapor deposition. It offers advantages when depositing coatings with higher molecular weights. Krypton is more expensive, than commonly used argon, but provides a higher yield and better coating is obtained when coating with heavier atoms. Krypton is often used for sputter coating heavier coatings like titanium
Krypton is used as a propellant for satellites and other spacecraft. Krypton is a preferred propellant for electric propulsion. Thrusters ionize and expel the krypton using electrical or magnetic fields at up to hundreds of kilometers per second providing in-space propulsion many times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion. At these velocities, a little propellant goes a long way.
It is used for production of semiconductors in annealing, etching and lithography applications. Krypton acts both as surface disruption agent and a plasma modulator, influencing the composition of plasmas through secondary ionization. Historically secondary ionization and surface disruption was achieved using argon due to cost and availability, but krypton provides the ability to select for ions present in plasma in additional ways.