What Is Helium Used For?

Helium is used to cool MRI magnets and research instruments, protect semiconductor and fiber-optic production, shield welds, run lab analyzers, find leaks, pressurize rockets, and lift balloons and airships.

Most of those jobs depend on physical traits no other gas matches.

WestAir supplies helium across California and Arizona.

Why Is Helium Important to So Many Industries?

Helium is important because it combines five traits in one gas: the lowest boiling point of any element, chemical inertness, the smallest atoms of any element, very low density, and high heat conductivity.

Liquid helium boils at −269°C (−452°F), just 4 degrees above absolute zero. Nothing else stays liquid that cold, so there’s no substitute for helium in cryogenic work below −256°C (−429°F).

Helium doesn’t react with other elements under normal conditions, and it doesn’t burn. It can surround molten metal, hot glass, or a silicon wafer without changing them.

Helium atoms are tiny and travel alone rather than in pairs. They slip through gaps that would stop air, which makes them easy to push through a leak or flush out of a material.

A liter of helium weighs about one-seventh as much as a liter of air. That gap is what gives a balloon its lift.

Helium carries heat about six times better than air, and only hydrogen beats it among gases. Manufacturers use that to pull heat away from silicon wafers, glass fiber, and heat-treated steel quickly.

Which Industries Use the Most Helium?

In the U.S., analytical, engineering, lab, science, and specialty-gas work uses the most helium, followed by controlled atmospheres (which include semiconductor and fiber-optic production) and lifting gas, which tie for second, then MRI, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates for 2025.

The survey groups chipmaking, fiber-optic production, and other protective-atmosphere work into a single category, so no one industry’s exact share is broken out. The survey’s categories have also changed over time, so its 2020 edition, which listed MRI as the top use, isn’t a direct comparison.

How Is Helium Used in Medicine?

Medicine uses helium to cool MRI magnets, ease breathing through blocked airways, drive heart-assist balloon pumps, and measure lung capacity.

MRI is the largest medical use. Conventional scanners use liquid helium to keep their magnet coils cold enough to carry current with zero resistance, and their magnets commonly hold around 1,500 liters.

Newer sealed magnet designs get by on as little as 7 liters, loaded once at the factory. Many conventional magnets now use zero-boil-off designs that recapture escaping helium and can run without routine refills, while older scanners still need periodic top-offs.

Heliox, a blend of helium and oxygen, helps patients whose upper airway is narrowed by a tumor, swelling, or a lodged object. The light mix flows through the tight spot with less turbulence than air, so each breath takes less effort. It eases breathing while doctors treat the cause, but it doesn’t fix the blockage itself.

Intra-aortic balloon pumps support a failing heart by inflating and deflating a balloon in the aorta with every heartbeat. Helium is the standard choice because its low density and viscosity let it shuttle through the long, thin catheter fast enough to keep pace.

Lung function labs add a small amount of helium to the test gas in a diffusing capacity test. Helium doesn’t pass into the blood, so how much it gets diluted reveals how much air the lungs hold.

Why Does Semiconductor Manufacturing Rely on Helium?

Chipmakers rely on helium to pull heat out of silicon wafers during processing, and as an inert carrier gas in some etching and deposition steps.

Plasma etching heats a wafer while it’s being patterned, and wafer temperature affects how evenly the pattern etches. Etch chambers run under vacuum, so almost nothing sits between the wafer and its holder to carry heat away.

Fabs fill that gap with a thin layer of helium fed under each wafer. The gas conducts heat from the wafer down into a water-cooled holder, which keeps the temperature steady across the whole surface.

In some etching and deposition steps, helium also dilutes or carries reactive gases into the chamber. Because helium is inert, it adjusts how concentrated those gases are and how they flow over the wafer without reacting with them or the wafer itself.

Fabs typically buy helium at ultra-high purity, since trace moisture or hydrocarbons can contaminate a wafer worth far more than the gas.

How Is Helium Used in Fiber-Optic Manufacturing?

Fiber-optic makers use helium at two stages: turning a porous glass preform into clear solid glass, and cooling freshly drawn fiber before it’s coated.

Most optical fiber starts as a preform, a thick rod built from layers of fine glass soot. Furnaces heat the preform to between 1,400°C and 1,600°C (2,552°F and 2,912°F) to fuse the soot into solid, transparent glass.

Consolidation furnaces run in an atmosphere that’s mostly helium. Helium dissolves into the hot glass and escapes easily, so gas trapped between soot particles diffuses out instead of leaving bubbles in the glass. Argon and nitrogen, the cheaper inert gases, leave bubbles behind.

Bubbles matter because a flaw in the preform becomes a weak stretch of fiber that can snap during drawing or scatter the light signal.

Next, a tall furnace called a draw tower melts the tip of the glass rod and pulls it into a strand about as thick as a human hair, roughly 125 micrometers (0.005 inch) across. The bare fiber leaves the furnace far too hot for its protective plastic coating, which needs it close to room temperature.

Helium-filled cooling tubes strip that heat in a short distance. Faster cooling lets manufacturers draw fiber at higher speeds without building taller towers, which is why helium supply directly affects fiber output.

How Do Welders Use Helium?

Welders add helium to argon shielding gas to get a hotter arc, deeper penetration, and faster travel speeds on aluminum, copper, magnesium, stainless steel, and thick sections.

Helium takes more voltage to ionize than argon, so the arc runs at a higher voltage for the same current. The extra energy goes into the weld pool, which helps on metals that pull heat away fast.

Argon-helium blends are standard for tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding of thicker aluminum and copper, with the helium share tuned to the material, thickness, and welding conditions. Helium blends also cut porosity in metal inert gas (MIG) welds on aluminum, since the hotter pool gives trapped gas more time to escape.

Stainless steel MIG work often runs on helium-rich three-gas mixes, where helium broadens the weld bead and adds heat.

Pure argon remains the better choice for thin sheet and general TIG and aluminum work. It starts the arc more easily, stays steadier, and costs less. Helium is also so light that welders need roughly 1.5 to 3 times the flow rate to shield the weld.

How Do Manufacturers Use Helium in Controlled Atmospheres?

Manufacturers use helium-filled furnaces to quench heat-treated steel parts quickly and to grow high-purity crystals without contamination.

Vacuum heat treaters harden tool steel and other alloys by heating parts, then flooding the furnace with gas to cool them fast. Nitrogen is the standard quench gas. Helium pulls heat out faster than nitrogen under comparable furnace conditions, so shops reach for it when large parts or demanding alloys need a faster quench.

Helium’s price limits how often it’s used. Some heat treaters blend it with argon or install recovery systems to reuse it, and others have invested in higher-pressure nitrogen furnaces to avoid helium entirely.

Crystal growers use helium atmospheres in some furnaces that produce sapphire, the base material for many LED chips. The helium protects the melt from contamination and, because it conducts heat well, gives operators another lever for controlling temperature as the crystal forms.

How Do Labs Use Helium for Gas Chromatography and Analysis?

Labs use helium mainly as the carrier gas in gas chromatography, the workhorse method for separating and measuring chemicals in a sample, including runs paired with a mass spectrometer.

A gas chromatograph uses a steady stream of carrier gas to push a vaporized sample through a long, thin column, and each compound exits at a different time. Helium has been the default choice for decades because it never reacts with the sample and keeps separations sharp across a wide range of flow rates.

Environmental labs testing water for pollutants, food labs checking for pesticide residue, and forensic labs screening for drugs all run these instruments daily.

Hydrogen and nitrogen can replace helium in many methods. Hydrogen runs faster but is flammable, so it needs leak sensors and safety interlocks. Nitrogen is cheap and safe but slows analysis down. Some labs have moved methods to hydrogen or nitrogen to cut helium costs, while keeping helium for validated methods that would be costly to requalify.

How Does Helium Keep Superconducting Research Equipment Cold?

Research facilities use liquid helium to cool the superconducting magnets in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, particle accelerators, and fusion experiments, and helium mixtures to chill quantum computers close to absolute zero.

NMR spectrometers work like small, high-powered MRI machines for molecules. Chemists and drug developers use them to map molecular structures. Most of their magnets are cooled by liquid helium, though zero-boil-off designs can avoid routine refills.

Particle accelerators use helium on an enormous scale. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider holds about 120 tonnes of helium to keep its magnets at −271.3°C (−456°F), cold enough that the helium becomes a superfluid that flows without friction.

Experimental fusion reactors rely on helium-cooled superconducting magnets to contain plasma hotter than the sun’s core.

Quantum computers are cooled with a mix of two kinds of helium. Ordinary helium, called helium-4, stops getting colder at about 1 degree above absolute zero, even when pumped hard. Dilution refrigerators add helium-3, a rarer and lighter form of helium. When helium-3 mixes into helium-4, it soaks up heat, much like sweat cooling your skin as it evaporates. That extra step chills processor chips to within one hundredth of a degree of absolute zero.

Why Is Helium the Go-To Gas for Leak Detection?

Helium is the standard leak detection gas because it slips through the smallest flaws, it’s nonflammable and chemically inert, and air contains only about 5 parts per million of it, so a detector can spot even a trace.

In a typical test, technicians fill or surround a part with helium and use a mass spectrometer leak detector tuned to helium’s exact atomic mass. Any helium reading above the faint natural background points to a leak. The method catches leaks far too small for soap bubbles or pressure-drop tests.

Refrigeration and air conditioning manufacturers check coils and compressors this way. Automakers test fuel systems, air conditioning lines, and battery packs. Aerospace, semiconductor, and vacuum equipment builders use it for parts where a tiny leak means a failed product, and pharmaceutical packagers use it to confirm sealed vials and pouches hold their integrity.

Helium’s lack of reactivity also means it won’t contaminate a medical device or a clean production line after testing.

How Is Helium Used in Aerospace and Rocket Launches?

Rockets use helium to pressurize propellant tanks, purge fuel lines, and operate valves, and NASA has long named purging and pressurizing as its single biggest use of the gas.

As a rocket burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the tanks empty fast. Helium fills the growing space above the propellant and holds tank pressure steady, so fuel keeps flowing to the engines without interruption.

Helium is one of the few gases that can do this job. Liquid hydrogen sits at −253°C (−423°F), cold enough to freeze nitrogen or argon solid, but helium stays a gas. It also won’t react with the propellant it touches.

Before and after fueling, helium flushes engine plumbing so leftover propellant vapors can’t form a dangerous mix. Many launch vehicles also use high-pressure helium to drive the pneumatic valves that control propellant flow.

Some designers are trying to cut that dependence. Europe’s Ariane 6 replaced its predecessor’s upper-stage helium pressurization system with one that turns a small share of the propellant into gas for pressurization.

Space telescopes have used liquid helium too. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope carried a supply to chill its infrared instruments so the telescope’s own heat wouldn’t blur faint signals.

Why Is Helium Used as a Lifting Gas?

Helium is the lifting gas for balloons, blimps, scientific balloons, and tethered aerostats because it’s far lighter than air and, unlike hydrogen, it can’t burn.

Hydrogen actually lifts a little more. NASA puts helium’s lift at about 93% of hydrogen’s, a small gap that operators accept to remove the fire risk entirely. The 1937 Hindenburg disaster, in which a hydrogen-filled airship caught fire, settled that tradeoff for passenger craft.

Party stores, event planners, and parade organizers fill balloons and giant character inflatables with helium. Advertising blimps and the tethered aerostats used for surveillance and communications run on it too.

NASA’s scientific balloon program sends telescopes and instruments to the edge of space on balloons lifted by helium. Scientific balloons once flew on hydrogen, and NASA has studied returning to it to reduce its reliance on helium.

National Weather Service offices launch weather balloons twice a day, and during helium shortages, many offices have switched to hydrogen generated on site.

How Do Divers Use Helium?

Deep divers breathe helium mixed with oxygen, sometimes with a little nitrogen, to avoid the mental impairment that nitrogen causes at depth, limit oxygen toxicity, and make each breath easier.

Breathing regular air gets risky past about 100 feet. Under pressure, nitrogen acts like a sedative, a condition called nitrogen narcosis that slows thinking and judgment. Helium has very little of that effect.

Technical divers use trimix, a blend of oxygen, helium, and nitrogen tailored to each dive’s depth. Keeping some nitrogen holds down cost and helps offset nervous-system problems that pure helium mixes can trigger on very deep dives.

Commercial divers who work offshore on oil platforms, pipelines, and salvage jobs breathe heliox, a blend of only helium and oxygen. Saturation divers live for weeks in pressurized chambers on heliox, and many operators capture and recycle the exhaled helium because of its cost.

Helium also thins the breathing gas at depth. Dense gas is harder to pull through a regulator, so a lighter mix reduces fatigue on long dives.

What Are the Other Commercial Uses of Helium?

Other commercial uses of helium include helium-sealed hard drives in data centers, coolant for advanced nuclear reactors, and helium-3 for radiation detection and quantum research.

Helium-filled hard drives cut the turbulence around spinning disks. That lets manufacturers fit more platters into a standard drive while lowering power draw. Cloud providers and enterprise data centers rely on them for high-capacity storage.

High-temperature gas-cooled reactors use helium to carry heat out of the core. Helium doesn’t corrode equipment, never boils or condenses inside the reactor, and doesn’t become radioactive when exposed to neutrons. Several new reactor designs in development use this approach to supply power and industrial heat.

Helium-3, a rare isotope, goes into neutron detectors and the quantum computing refrigerators described earlier. U.S. supply comes from the decay of tritium, which makes it scarce and costly.

Whatever you need helium for, from a one-off job to steady, high-volume use, WestAir can help you lock in the grade and supply plan your work depends on.