The Best Thermal Management Solutions for Semiconductor OEMs

As the demand for miniature chips increases and their design advances, semiconductor OEMs in Northern California face thermal management challenges within their facilities. To combat these challenges, they need a reliable, local solution. That’s where Swagelok Northern California comes in.

Swagelok offers a wide range of thermal management solutions, but what separates Swagelok from other solution providers is the ability to go beyond traditional boundaries to suggest custom components that can help OEMs save time, increase the speed of production, and reduce downtime to minimize associated costs. Because when it comes to the best thermal management solutions, the components matter.

Components and Thermal Management

When assessing the root cause of your thermal management challenges, Swagelok’s team of experts looks at the following components.

Hoses

Hoses are the heart of thermoregulation. They carry both extremely hot and cold fluid as per process requirements. Constant exposure to these temperature extremes may lead to a change of material properties for the hose and for its associated components, such as any fittings and unions.

Insulation

Without proper insulation, process fluids lose their desired profile temperature during the transmission and lead to a cascading system failure. With insulation failure, extreme high temp fluid may cause burns or accidents, and extreme cold fluid may ice up tubes from outside to damage multibillion-dollar equipment connected to it during condensation.

Regulators

An ideal high-temperature regulator must have features and built-in components to vaporize liquid samples or preheat gas samples to avoid condensation. Moreover, it should quickly react to changing thermal loads coupled with adjustable power output to match variable system conditions. In the absence of all these salient features, avoiding thermal breakdown is nearly impossible.

Needle Valves

In addition to many other design requirements, the stem packing of a needle valve decides its reliable operation in a variable temperature profile. Usually, PTFE, PCTFE, or Grafoil stem packing are most popular for offering reliability even up to 648°C.

Determining Which Thermal Management Solution Is Best

When it comes to thermal management for semiconductor OEMs, choosing the right material or designing a process line may feel overwhelming amidst so many options available. It’s important to start with the hose needed for your high-temperature applications and then the insulation material.

For instance, elastomers are widely preferred custom insulation material for withstanding a wide temperature range from -40° to 200°C. However, there are different types of elastomers available, and each type has a specific application area.

While polyacrylate elastomers are best suited for high temp petroleum fuel applications up to 300 °F, Fluorocarbon elastomers (FKM) match close to a universal elastomer with a wide temp range from 5 °F to 390 °F.

Similarly, for designing a high-temperature hose, there are many material options available, including nylon, PFA, vinyl, and Polyethylene. Each material has a different coefficient of thermal expansion and thus has a predefined operational temp range. Both the core and the reinforcement of a hose can be designed with different materials to operate at different temperature levels. For instance, a hose with a smooth-bore PTFE core and 304 SS braid reinforcement performs well between –53°C to 230°C. However, with a nylon core and fiber braid, the window of operation narrows down to –40°C to 65°C only.

If you’re unsure about which material or design to implement, the experts at Swagelok can make an assessment to recommend the best thermal management solutions for your operational needs.

At Swagelok, we offer thermal management solutions that are:

• Reliable over a wide range of temperature
• Optimized to respond to the thermal load without overshoot or undershoot
• Easy to keep fugitive emissions under control
• Cost-efficient, reducing unplanned downtime and equipment failure

Swagelok Offers the Best Thermal Management Solutions for Semiconductor OEMs

In the semiconductor industry, safety is critical, and thermal failure of equipment negatively impacts personnel safety and your bottom line. Let Swagelok help you keep your semiconductor production facility temperature in check while you focus on maximizing productivity to meet increased demand.

We have a wide range of customizable products to help you meet your thermal management requirements with ease. Whether you need a dual seal arrangement for reliable support or a regulator that can quickly react to changes in thermal loads, we have you covered. Our KEV series regulators feature an electrically heated vaporizing regulator to help you maximize uptime without causing overshoot or undershoot. Similarly, our metal series hose can offer a reliable performance range of -328°F to 998°F. Plus, our N series and NH series needle valves can work within -63°F to 450°F with PTFE packing and up to 1,200°F with Grafoil® packing.

Our team of experts can help you design custom thermal management solutions to speed up the production process and reduce downtime associated with component failure. At Swagelok, we understand how costly downtime is for semiconductor OEMs. Therefore, we deliver customized thermal management solutions in a timely manner.

To find out more about how Swagelok Northern California can help you choose the best thermal management solution for your needs, contact our team today by calling 510-933-6200.

Meet one of our engineers

Malik Durojaiye | Assembly Services Engineer

Malik Durojaiye began his Swagelok career in 2019 as an Engineer in our Assembly Services group. Prior to Swagelok, Malik developed as a design engineer as well as a manufacturing engineer for 6 years serving Kentucky and California with Altec Industries; a leading provider of products and services to the electric utility, telecommunications, tree care, lights and signs, and contractor markets.