Our State-of-the-Art Research Center
Our customers have asked us about the development of new advanced specialty gases, including etchants and deposition precursor materials that are not currently available in the marketplace. In response, EFC Gases & Advanced Materials is addressing that demand in our state-of-the-art research and development facility in Hatfield, PA.
At our research center in Hatfield Township, we are:
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- Conceptualizing new materials to address the industry’s most pressing application requirements.
- Synthesizing trial quantities of new candidate materials using traditional synthesis techniques and the latest advanced fluorination technologies.
- Scaling up optimized process chemistry and purification technologies to provide pilot and commercial quantities of unique new materials for the semiconductor industry.
- Developing robust analytical methods to detect and characterize chemical species and to verify product integrity down to the ppb level in most cases.
Our customers in the semiconductor industry require the highest purity materials with consistent quality for traditional applications in plasma etching and deposition and for emerging applications in atomic layer etching (ALE) and deposition (ALD). EFC Gases & Advanced Materials is taking a leading role in providing these materials to the industry.
Under the leadership of Dr. Bob Syvret, a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and recognized industry expert in fluorine chemistry and manufacturing technology, our Hatfield Township Research Center Team is collaborating with several strategic academic institutions globally to leverage their world-class assets with EFC’s industry knowledge and position. The result is technology based solutions to today’s challenges facing the semiconductor industry.
Pilot Plant Facility for Chemical Development
Our Pilot Plant area for chemical development and scale up of advanced gases and precursors for the semiconductor industry opened in 2022. The pilot plant development area is equipped with several unit operations including a 5-gallon (20-L) high-pressure (3,000 psig) high-temperature (350 °C) CSTR, a 20-gallon (75-L) Hastelloy reactor, several Ni-alloy packed bed catalyst reactors, a spinning band distillation system (providing efficient fractionation of molecules with small differences in their boiling points) and supporting analytical instrumentation included gas-phase UV-VIS and FT-IR spectrometers and a GC-MS/TCD/FID. This equipment is rarely seen in a manufacturing environment and represents EFC’s commitment to turning research into viable technologies for the semiconductor industry.
EFC’s R&D Center already provides low-kg quantities of new molecules for advanced applications in semiconductor materials processing. This new pilot plant facility will provide for multi-kg scale synthesis and production of critical new materials and will bridge the gap between R&D discovery and commercial manufacturing.
According to EFC’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Bob Syvret, “this investment in state-of-the-art pilot facilities moves EFC Gases & Advanced Materials a step further in providing commercial volumes of critically required new materials to meet the demands of the semiconductor industry in the 21st century.”
More Content
Chief Scientist Bob Syvret Awarded for Work in Fluorine Chemistry
We are proud to announce our Chief Scientist has been named the 2020 recipient of the American Chemical Society National Award for Creative work in Fluorine Chemistry. Bob is just the 2nd industrial chemist to receive this honor since the awards annual inception in 1972.
New R&D Building At Our Hatfield Plant
We are currently building a new Research & Development center at our Hatfield Plant. Scheduled to open this year, the product development area will be equipped with many advanced capabilities, including a pilot scale high-pressure high-temperature reactor and a specialized spinning band distillation system.
An Interview with Dr. Robert Syvret
Chief Scientist, Dr. Bob Syvret, is working to synthesize leading edge, highly specialized etchants and deposition materials and to develop purification processes that will then be sent to the new product development area at EFC’s Hatfield location for manufacture on a commercial scale.
