Custom Solutions

Epitaxial Abatement

In 2014, Highvac was requested to deliver a SAFE and RELIABLE PoU (Point of Use) abatement system to a major 200mm semiconductor manufacturer for their ASM Epsilon Epitaxy tool. The customer was originally utilizing a competitive burn/wet PoU abatement device and experiencing significant maintenance requirements, mostly associated with inlet clogging. They then installed a PoU wet scrubber in front of the existing burn/wet abatement device in an attempt to eliminate the inlet clogging. Due to the potential volatility of the EPI process, the customer started to experience explosions in their PoU wet scrubbers.

Highvac provided a burn/wet Ecoguard PoU abatement system on a six month evaluation, during which time there were zero events for maintenance or safety. The customer has since replaced another twelve of its original abatement devices with EcoGuard PoU abatement systems and has budgeted to replace a minimum of twelve additional systems with more EcoGuards. After more than four years of operation, the customer has experienced little to no maintenance or downtime on the EcoGuard PoU abatement systems installed on its epitaxial reactor systems.

H-Crate

In 2013, Highvac was asked by a customer to deliver their vacuum pumps on or in non-flammable pallets or crates. We also recognized a need from other customers to make the crating process easier, more effecient, and more effective, as everybody seemed to have a different opinion on how to properly package a vacuum pump for shipment. Due to the high volume of pumps we receive from a myriad of customers, shipping companies, and employees, we have seen enough to know that there are several wrong ways to crate a pump. We then worked with a manufacturer of aluminum storage and shipping products to develop a crate that would fulfill our and our customers’ needs. To this date, we have enjoyed the ease of use of the H-CRATE and have shipped and received hundreds of pumps to and from multiple customers with absolutely no shipping damage to pumps and no irreparable damage to our crates. Contact us now to find out more about Highvac’s H-CRATE.

EBARA A70W SCREW PUMP RETROFIT

Dry Pumps are typically constructed of cast iron. Due to the corrosive environment of semiconductor processes such as Metal Etch and PECVD, the internal components become etched to the point that the pumps can no longer be effectively rebuilt.

Short of replacing hundreds of pumps, end-users are left with few if any cost-effective options to sustain operations. New pumps are costly and oftentimes require facilities upgrades, which can cost as much as or more than the pumps.

As a result, and based on requests from multiple customers with aging Ebara A70 pumps, Highvac developed a “plug and play”, cost-effective, reliable, sustainable solution, upcycling the frame and blower of the A70W system by replacing the multi-stage roots dry pump with a new dry screw pump.

The result is a more robust vacuum pump (Dry Screw vs. Multi-stage roots) delivered in the same “form-factor” as the original A70W, with both mechanical and electrical connections identical to the customer’s original pump.

Highvac has shipped several of these retrofit pumps to customers for harsh-duty applications like Tungsten Deposition and Metal Etch. Each end-user is experiencing significantly longer life than the original multi-stage roots pumps due to the advanced dry screw technology.