Stop Wasting Heat in Your Glovebox
If you’ve ever heated wafers inside a glovebox, you know the struggle. You’re pumping in wattage, but a huge chunk of that energy is just… gone. Most standard IR elements throw heat in every direction, which means half your power is warming up the chamber walls instead of your substrate. It’s a waste. That’s why we started putting gold-coated reflectors right into the heater assembly. Why gold? It’s not about the bling. Gold is incredible at reflecting infrared light. By adding a thin layer of it to the reflector, we catch those escaping photons and bounce them right back down. It turns a scattered glow into a tight, focused beam. You get way more heat hitting the wafer without having to crank up the power draw. It basically turns a blunt instrument into a precision tool. Handling the heat The best part is how fast it gets moving. Since the energy is concentrated, your ramp-up times drop significantly. You hit your target temperature and get on with your day. But a heads-up: this much power in one spot means you have to be careful. If your wafer is super thin or the gap is too small, you can end up with hot spots. You’ll want to double-check your PID controller settings so you don’t overshoot your target and fry something. Fitting it in We know gloveboxes are cramped. We designed these to be small and simple—basically drop-in replacements for the IR arrays you’re already using. And here’s a nice side effect: because the gold does the heavy lifting, you can often run your lamps at a lower power level to get the same result. That puts way less stress on the filament, meaning your lamps won’t burn out nearly as fast. Just one thing—keep those gold surfaces clean. A bit of dust or oxidation on the reflector will tank your efficiency pretty quickly. Keep it shiny, and it’ll keep working.