Carten – Reeling in the Years
High performance and technology markets in semiconductor are famously cyclical, so manufacturing equipment at the leading edge of technology for 40 years from one site inevitably leads to constant change and evolution in terms of manufacturing processes, site capability & capacity, and employee skillset.
Declan Irish
High performance and technology markets in semiconductor are famously cyclical, so manufacturing equipment at the leading edge of technology for 40 years from one site inevitably leads to constant change and evolution in terms of manufacturing processes, site capability & capacity, and employee skillset.
So, what kind of change would you see over 40+ years at a leading semiconductor component and equipment maker in Waterford, and how did it all start in Waterford in the first place?
Brendan Grogan originally set up Carten Ireland in late 1981, working with the National Manpower Service (Government recruitment agency at that time) and Dan Carten – who founded Carten Controls in Connecticut USA in 1970 – to set up the Irish branch of Carten Controls.
Manufacturing of high purity product was obviously quite different in 1981, but manufacturing of wetted area equipment for wafer production still required a controlled environment – i.e. a Cleanroom – when UHP product is assembled & tested, even back in 1981.
Looking back, our early Cleanrooms may not look like it now, but the early Cleanroom pictured illustrate just about the cleanest places you could be in Ireland at that time…
With microchip leading-edge requirements more demanding yearly, purity requirements for equipment manufacturers increased – demanding more efficient product designs, to be manufactured in higher specification environments.
Markets for the semiconductor industry have changed rapidly from predominantly being required for personal computers (PC’s), modern applications now being based on consumer trends based on mobility. Whereas microchip node feature sizes have shrunk, equipment makers like Carten have had to grow to offer product lines to achieve multiple application tasks and functionality.
Carten’s traditional core business has always been to enable the safe ultra-high purity transfer of bulk inert gases into the semiconductor FAB. This is far from a mundane task, with a premium on high performance alloys, durable dynamic assemblies, with minimum polymeric wetted area volume to ensure ultra-high pure gases remain just that – as they are distributed throughout the FAB.
In the early days brass valves brazed to copper piping could work just fine for this purpose, but by the early 1990’s, high performance alloys designed with no dead volume and minimal polymeric content to allow trapped gases diffuse, or outgas, back into the main product stream – became essential.
The construction of these product lines, at an extremely low surface roughness, while maintaining a serviceable and non-degradable metallic seal at mass spectrometer rated vacuum tight leak rates, is not an easy – or easily replicated – engineering task.
To achieve this, Carten has grown with a critical network of machining and surface treatment expertise throughout Ireland, a supply chain that has been maintained and developed as much as our own organisation – we simply could not achieve what we have to date without this highly specialised ecosystem.
In the past ten years, Carten have leveraged our UHP component manufacturing expertise – and our Fujikin corporate global network – to expand into manufacturing turnkey, plug & play, gas mixing systems.
A key condition distinguishing Carten from our competitors is the flow capacity of our valves is higher than our competitors – not compromising purity requirements to achieve this. When scaling to fully integrated systems, providing fully validated HMI interfaced turnkey systems, this has allowed Carten offer complex and bespoke solutions to semiconductor customers. In addition, Fujikin, our parent Japanese company – and a major valve, component, and equipment supplier in the semiconductor industry – allow Carten the scale to compete on a global level across all regions.
After COVID, and considering well-known current geopolitical realities, it is clear the supply chain dynamics underpinning our industry for so long are now changing. Providing mission-critical manufacturing and fabrication capabilities for the semiconductor industry has become not only a Carten key USP – it has become a national priority in multiple regions.
Although the semiconductor industry remains Carten’s clear dominant market, it is also clear the semiconductor industry itself has diversified into most major industries. This has allowed Carten supply every major regional FAB using a highly skilled workforce and specialised ecosystem – all within Ireland.
This manufacturing capability is part of a national core strength that must be maintained, supported, and prioritised to ensure we remain our relevance in key manufacturing sector of semiconductor markets. It is a manufacturing capability, supply chain, and skillset that cannot be lost – but built on, and grown further – to ensure we can continue to maintain our own leading edge on a global scale.
