Here’s Why You Might Want To Try Metal Spring Energized Seals in Semiconductor Applications
How do you solve a sealing challenge that involves rotary motion, limits on frictional drag, variances along the sealing surface plane, and dynamic sealing? Surprisingly, a Metal-Spring-Energized seal could solve this problem.
Metal-Spring-Energized (MSE) seals offer an alternate chemically inert applied material strategy, namely the use of an Avalon PTFE sealing jacket energized with an array of corrosion resistant metal spring systems, providing tailored and engineered reaction sealing forces. MSE seals are widely adopted in Aerospace, Energy, and Life Science markets for their lower cost of integration, ultra-high pressure, broad operating temperatures, within chemically resistant designs.
For the semiconductor market, we can harness the chemical resistance capability and combine it with novel spring designs to deliver low-differential pressure sealing for wet chemical applications, without the need for mold tooling, as the MSE is machined from optimized isostatically molded stock shapes.
When a veteran territory sales manager at Greene Tweed was confronted with this sealing challenge from an R&D engineer working on a wet process tool problem, he leaned on the full breath of our MSE capability. Our applications engineering team then tailored the “jacket” design to suit the envelope requirements and apply an appropriate “clean” chemically inert Avalon material. The torque requirements and seal deflection range were met via spring design strategies that enable predictive frictional drag as a function of the deflection. The design freedom and versatility of the MSE is uniquely suited to meet the challenges of this application.
To date, we’ve supplied parts for evaluation, and testing by our customer is on-going. Initial results are promising. If you have a seal challenge you believe can benefit from GT product design and simulation capabilities, please reach out to us. For more information about our MSE design offerings please contact your local GT sales representative.
