Peristaltic pumps pumping silicon waste from silicon wafers

Pumping silicon waste with a peristaltic hose pump

ICs, microcircuits, microchips, or (silicon) chips are widely used in the electronic industry. These microchips consist mostly of semiconductor devices in a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin matter of semiconductor material. Integrated circuits are used in almost all electronic equipment and have made a significant change to today’s world of electronics.

Wafers are a thin slice of semiconductor material. Wafers are applied in the manufacturing of integrated circuits and other micro chips. The wafer serves as the under lying layer (the substrate) for micro-electronic devices.

Wafers are used in many process steps such as etching, lithographic etching and ion implementation.

The problem: strong abrasive matter

Shinetsu are the leading silicon wafer producers located in Livingston, Scotland but they have always experienced reliability problems in pumping the silicon waste from the cutting of the wafers.
The heavy and extremely abrasive silicon waste causes severe problems in all pump types used to remove this silicon waste after the production process.
Verder chose an industrial hose pump: these peristaltic pumps have a huge advantage for extremely abrasive products: the only wearing part is the hose. The rigid Verderflex tubing pumps the silicon waste without damaging the Verderflex peristaltic pump. The wearing part; the hose, needs to be changed on a regular basis.

The solution: a Verderflex Dura hose pump

The peristaltic hose pump was considered a big success when it managed to perform for 8 weeks without failure. The simple process of changing the hose was established at 6 week intervals thus ensuring the peristaltic pump never failed in service and wafer production continued uninterrupted.
Another benefit of a hose pump is the ease of maintenance and therefore the minimum amount of downtime.

The new Verderflex Dura series of peristaltic pumps are an excellent solution for ShinEtsu as a testing and proving place on this extremely difficult silicon waste application.

After several failures and hose changes Verder engineers can guarantee beyond doubt that the new Dura pump increased hose life by 100% and is an efficient tool for pumping silicon waste.
ShinEtsu purchased the Verderflex Dura peristaltic trial pump and have now replaced the VF hose pump they used previously.

If you have similar difficult matter to pump, please contact us via the contact form.

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