We group our products into three product groups, based upon the similarity
of the product function, type of product and manufacturing processes. These
three groups of products are: Instruments, Control and Vacuum Products; Power
and Reactive Gas Products; and Analytical Solutions Products.
Instruments, Control and Vacuum Products
This group of products includes pressure and vacuum measurement solutions, materials
delivery products, automation and control products and vacuum products.
Pressure and Vacuum Measurement Solutions. Each of our pressure measurement
and control product lines consists of products that are designed for a variety
of pressure ranges and accuracies.
Baratron® Pressure Measurement Products. These products are typically used
to measure the pressure of the gases being distributed upstream of the process
chambers, process chamber pressures and pressures between process chambers,
vacuum pumps and exhaust lines. We believe we offer the widest range of gas
pressure measurement instruments in the semiconductor and advanced thin film
materials processing industries.
Automatic Pressure and Vacuum Control Products. These products enable precise
control of process pressure by electronically actuating valves that control
the flow of gases in and out of the process chamber to minimize the difference
between desired and actual pressure in the chamber.
In most cases, Baratron® pressure measurement instruments provide the pressure
input to the automatic pressure control device. Together, these components create
an integrated automatic pressure control subsystem. Our pressure control products
can also accept inputs from other measurement instruments, enabling the automatic
control of gas input or exhaust based on parameters other than pressure.
Vacuum Gauging Products. We offer a wide range of vacuum instruments consisting
of vacuum measurement sensors and associated power supply and readout units
as well as transducers where the sensor and electronics are integrated within
a single package. These gauges complement our Baratron® capacitance manometers
for medium and high vacuum ranges.
Granville-Phillips® Gauges. Our indirect gauges use thermal conductivity
and ionization gauge technologies to measure pressure and vacuum levels, and
our direct gauges use the pressure measurement technology of a Micro-electromechanical
systems (MEMS)-based piezo sensor.
Materials Delivery Products. Each of our materials delivery product lines combines
MKS flow, pressure measurement and control technologies to provide customers
with integrated subsystems and precise control capabilities that are optimized
for a given application.
Flow Measurement and Control Products. Flow measurement products include gas
flow measurement products based upon thermal conductivity and pressure technologies.
The flow control products combine the flow measurement device with valve control
elements based upon solenoid, piezo-electric and piston pump technologies. These
products measure and automatically control the mass flow rate of gases into
the process chamber.
Valve Products. Our vacuum valves are used for vacuum isolation of vacuum lines,
load locks, vacuum chambers and pumps for chamber isolation and vacuum containment.
The MKS family of vacuum isolation valves include bellows and ball valves, manual,
pneumatic and electro-pneumatic actuated valves in heated or unheated angle
and inline configurations, safety shut off valves and soft start valves. Our
pressure control valve line includes butterfly, vane and poppet throttle valves
with integrated control subsystems.
Automation and Control Products. We design and manufacture a suite of products
that allow semiconductor and other manufacturing customers to better control
their processes through computer-controlled automation. These products include
automation platforms, programmable automation controllers, temperature controllers,
software solutions for automation, I/O and distributed programmable I/O, gateways
and connectivity products.
Automation and control products are used to connect sensors, actuators and
subsystems to the chamber and system control computers. They support a variety
of industry-standard connection methods as well as conventional discrete digital
and analog signals. Chamber and system control computers process these signals
in real time and allow customers to precisely manage the process conditions.
Connecting sensors, chambers and tools to the factory network is essential
for improving quality and productivity. Our connectivity products allow information
to flow from the process sensors and subsystems and from the process tool control
computer to the factory network. By enabling this information flow, we believe
that we help customers optimize their processes through advanced process control,
and diagnose equipment problems from a remote location, which is referred to
as “e-diagnostics.”
Vacuum Products. This group of products consists of vacuum technology products,
including vacuum containment components, effluent management subsystems and
custom stainless steel chambers, vessels and pharmaceutical process equipment
hardware and housings.
Stainless Steel Components, Process Solutions and Custom Stainless Steel Hardware.
Our vacuum process solutions consist of vacuum fittings, traps and heated lines
that are used downstream from the process chamber to control process effluent
gases by preventing condensable materials from depositing particles near or
back into the process chamber.
Custom Vacuum Solutions. Our design and manufacturing facilities build high
purity chambers for material and thin film coating processes. We design and
build custom panels, weldments, American Society of Manufacturing Engineers
vessels and housings, as well as a line of Bioprocessing Equipment Standard
certified components for biopharmaceutical processes.
Power and Reactive Gas Products
This group of products includes power delivery and reactive gas generation products
used in semiconductor and other thin film applications and in medical imaging
equipment applications.
Power Delivery Products. We design and manufacture microwave, direct current
and radio frequency power delivery systems as well as radio frequency matching
networks and metrology products. In the semiconductor, thin film and other market
sectors, our power supplies are used to provide energy to various etching, stripping
and deposition processes. Our power amplifiers are also used in medical imaging
equipment.
Reactive Gas Generation Products. We design and manufacture reactive gas generation
products, which create reactive species. A reactive species is an atom or molecule
in an unstable state, which is used to facilitate various chemical reactions
in processing of thin films (deposition of films, etching and cleaning of films
and surface modifications). A number of different technologies are used to create
reactive gas including different plasma technologies and barrier discharge technologies.
Our reactive gas products include ozone generators and subsystems used for deposition
of insulators onto semiconductor devices, ozonated water delivery systems for
advanced semiconductor wafer and flat panel display and solar panel cleaning,
microwave plasma based products for photo resist removal and food and beverage
applications and a line of remote plasma generators which provide reactive gases
for a wide range of semiconductor, flat panel and other thin film process applications.
As materials are deposited on wafers, films, or solar cells, the deposited material
also accumulates on the walls of the vacuum process chamber. Our atomic fluorine
generators are used to clean the process chambers between deposition steps to
reduce particulates and contamination caused by accumulated build up on the
chamber walls.
Analytical Solutions Products
This group of products includes gas composition analysis products as well as
information technology products and custom vacuum solutions.
Gas Composition Analysis Products. Gas composition analysis instruments are
sold to a wide variety of industries including the engine development, environmental
emissions monitoring, air safety monitoring and semiconductor industries.
Mass Spectrometry-Based Gas Composition Analysis Instruments. These products
are based on quadrupole mass spectrometer sensors that separate gases based
on molecular weight. These sensors include built-in electronics and software
that analyzes the composition of background and process gases in the process
chamber. These instruments are provided both as bench top laboratory systems
and as process gas monitoring systems used in the diagnosis of semiconductor
manufacturing process systems.
Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) Based Gas Composition Analysis Products.
FTIR-based products provide information about the composition of gases by measuring
the absorption of infra-red light as it passes through the sample being measured.
Gas analysis applications include measuring the compositions of mixtures of
reactant gases; measuring the purity of individual process gases; measuring
the composition of process exhaust gas streams to determine process health;
monitoring emissions to ensure environmental compliance and monitoring ambient
air for safety. These instruments are provided as stand-alone monitors and as
process gas monitoring systems.
Tunable Filter Spectroscopy (TFS™) Products. The TFS sensor platform
consists of a light source, a sample cell (for gases, liquids or solids), a
wavelength separating element (spectrometer) and a photo-detector. A wavelength
separating element “slices” the wavelength components of the broadband
light source which then interacts with the sample molecules. The resulting spectrum
acts as “fingerprints” which are used to identify sample components
and/or quantify the sample composition. Our TFS products provide real-time gas
analysis in the natural gas analysis and hydrocarbon processing industries.
Mass spectrometry-based, FTIR-based and TFS-based gas monitoring systems can
indicate out-of-bounds conditions, such as the presence of undesirable contaminant
gases and water vapor or out-of-tolerance amounts of specific gases in the process,
which alert operators to diagnose and repair faulty equipment.
Information Technology Products. We design software products including design
of experiment and multivariate analysis software, quality prediction, optimization,
interactive decision-making, advanced process control, and early fault detection
for analyzing large and complex data sets. Our focus is on providing solutions
which improve the quality and yield of manufacturing processes for the pharmaceutical,
biotech and other industries.
Custom Vacuum Solutions. Our fabrication facility builds precision machined
components and electromechanical assemblies for the analytical instrument, scientific,
semiconductor and medical industries to ultra-high vacuum standards.