Industrial nitrous oxide (N2O), often referred to as laughing gas, is used in the high-tech thin film industries of semiconductor and LCD manufacturing.

The primary application is the reaction with silane (SiH4) or other silicon precursors to produce high-quality oxide films (SiOx), which are used as electrical insulators in microelectronic transistors.

Nitrous oxide is increasingly used to make thin-film oxides with other elements like titanium, aluminum, magnesium, indium, and zirconium and is also used in the selective etching of semiconductor thin films.