Stop Wasting Your Heat
In a semiconductor fab, every wasted watt is basically just throwing money away. Most people don’t think about it, but a lot of the infrared energy from your heating elements just drifts off and disappears into the chamber walls. It’s a waste. That’s why we use gold-coated reflectors. It sounds fancy, but the goal is simple: make sure the heat actually hits the wafer instead of heating up the room.
Why gold?
Standard quartz lamps are messy. They spray radiation in every direction. By adding a thin layer of gold, we can bounce back over 98% of that near-infrared energy. It changes the whole dynamic. Instead of a wide, weak spray of heat, you get a focused beam. You can hit your target temperature way faster. And because you aren’t just cranking up the voltage to compensate for the loss, you won’t burn out your filaments nearly as often.
Getting the heat exactly where it needs to go
The real trick is in the curve of the reflector. We tweak that shape to control exactly how the heat lands on the wafer. If you’re using a setup that isn’t tuned this way, you’ll end up with cold spots. On a 300mm surface, those uneven temperature gaps are a nightmare. With the right focus, the heat is steady and predictable across the whole thing.
The trade-off (because there’s always one)
Here is the catch: when you focus that much energy, the lamp’s electrodes take a hit. Plus, the housing has to deal with some of that reflected heat bouncing back. You can’t just ignore your cooling. If your airflow is too low, your lamps are going to die a lot faster. You’ve got to make sure your cooling manifolds can handle the extra density.
The bottom line
We built these to be simple drop-in replacements for your current IR arrays. You just wire them into your existing controllers and you’re good to go. The best part? You’ll actually see the power draw drop while your process temperatures stay rock solid. Your HVAC system will probably thank you, too, since there’s less stray heat leaking into the fab.