Case Studies

Our customer was looking to improve the performance of their wafer handling system. Their historical approach involved the use of an air cylinder and a welded metal bellows to seal the penetration into the vacuum chamber.

Moving highly toxic gasses from bulk storage to the point-of-use is a perennial challenge for many semiconductor manufacturers. Unfortunately, most conventional pumps rely on seals that are subject to wear—potentially risking harmful leakage and human exposure.

Unfortunately, tolerance stacks across the system would regularly force the pedestal off-center and out-of-alignment with the shower head resulting in quality issues and necessitating manual re-adjustments to the assembly.

An off-the-shelf pneumatic actuator was designed for much higher loads than our customer. The temperature extremes presented by semiconductor processing presented additional challenges for materials, assembly, and operation/useful life.