Why Elastomer Seals Fail in Semiconductor Equipment

Course Description

Elastomer seals are critical components in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, where they are routinely exposed to demanding conditions including aggressive process chemistries, plasma environments, vacuum, elevated temperatures, and repeated mechanical cycling. Understanding how elastomer properties, seal design, application conditions, and installation practices interact is essential for achieving reliable sealing performance. 

This webinar will explore common seal failure modes and the mechanisms that can contribute to premature failure, including chemical and plasma degradation, compression set, thermal effects, mechanical damage, and installation-related issues. Examples will be used to demonstrate how visual observations, application information, and engineering analysis can help identify potential root causes and guide corrective actions. 

The course concludes by presenting information on current or emerging technologies and the attendant challenges, that include hybrid bonding, co-packaged optics, and advanced substrate materials. The course also touches upon challenges with thermal dissipation for high-power AI products, and the bottlenecks now shaping next-generation semiconductor package roadmaps. 

Learning Objectives

• An understanding of the fundamental properties of elastomers and how those properties influence seal performance. 

• Types of elastomers used in semiconductor manufacturing and factors that affect the material selection process.

• How operating conditions such as temperature, plasma, process chemistry, vacuum, and mechanical loading can affect seal life. 

• Common seal failure modes and how to identify them. 

• The importance of proper seal design, gland design, and installation practices. 

• Understand how failure analysis can be used to troubleshoot sealing problems and identify opportunities for improvement. 

• How ASNA can support customers through application evaluation, material and design recommendation, failure analysis, customer engineering, and on-site installation support. 

   

   

Who Should Attend

This course is ideal for engineers and technical professionals, including equipment, process, mechanical, applications, reliability, maintenance, and field service engineers. 

Instructors

ANSA