Comparing Resistive vs. IR Heaters for Liquid Heating
The ability to heat a process tank, keep the temperature controlled, and do no damage to the heating element has, like other processes in semiconductor manufacturing, improved over time. With the increased emphasis on throughput and uptime, fabs are hesitant to schedule repetitive preventative maintenance of such items as process tank inline heaters. Other equipment applications in billion dollar fabs are more worthy of maintenance time and talent.
The infrared (IR) heater – often called radiant heating – was the standard in the semi industry for many years. Reflectors to generate increased temperature typically surrounded a quartz heating lamp.