Greene, Tweed expands R&D, opens elastomer center

KULPSVILLE, Pa.—Greene, Tweed & Co. Inc. opened its Elastomer Center of Excellence at the firm's Advanced Technology Group headquarters in Kulpsville on Jan. 11.

The 2,200-sq.ft. clean room is part of a larger manufacturing facility that spans about 200,000 square feet. The company operates five manufacturing facilities globally with 1,500 employees. The new center will serve the global needs of the firm's businesses.

The firm didn't add any new jobs, but the new center increased productivity by consolidating Greene, Tweed's research and development area away from its manufacturing space.

“Historically we were manufacturing and doing development in the same space,” Semiconductor General Manager Rick Andersen said. “As demands for research and development increase, the demand for creating existing materials increases as well. We wanted to create a center that allows us the ability and flexibility to develop all of our raw material through finalized packaged product separate from manufacturing.”

The new center is dedicated to the development of new elastomer compounds for the semiconductor market and includes several new process systems, including internal mixers, roll mixers, extruders, press systems, post-cure ovens and inspection systems. Greene, Tweed said the new clean room allows for complete integration of elastomer development—from initial raw material mixing and development to final product packaging for new semiconductor compounds.

The elastomer center is developing materials to use to make sealing products. Greene, Tweed creates finished product seals that are put into process tools and then used to create integrated circuits at the molecular level. The company's semiconductor business mainly produces seals using perfluoroelastomers because of its ability to maintain strong vacuum integrity at elevated temperatures with really strong chemical resistance.

Andersen said the semiconductor industry is demanding tighter and tighter tolerances, which in turn puts more pressure on the development of clean chemicals that are resistant to a wider range of chemicals than ever before.

“The number of transitions is doubling every 18 months to reduce costs,” Andersen said. “Line geometries have moved down from 32 nanometers, to 22 nanometers, to 14 nanometers, to seven nanometers and on a roadmap to five and below. In order to be able to process that, there's introduction of new cleaning gasses, new process gasses as well as particle restrictions. The need for very clean materials to be able to exist in the environment while maintaining vacuum integrity is very critical.”

Greene, Tweed has four businesses that uses its elastomer technology—aerospace, oilfield, petrochemical and power, and semiconductor. He said the firm sees a lot of opportunity within semiconductor, with steady growth projected for the next two to three years.

The center has increased the firm's cycle times in its development process.

“We can be unabated throughout the process to meet customer needs faster with better results because of the investment,” Andersen said.