SOME of the world’s electronics industry giants are making significant savings in production costs thanks to a water treatment breakthrough by one of this year’s Queen’s Award for Innovation winners in the United Kingdom.

Hanovia Ltd based in Slough in southern England is among world leaders in the research and development and production of ultraviolet lamps for water treatment.

The company, which is part of the Halma Group, employs custom-engineered lamps in ultra-high purity water treatment systems which are in use worldwide to disinfect drinking water and industrial process water used in food, drink and pharmaceutical production.

Ultraviolet (UV) treatment is also used to produce pure water for the final rinsing of silicon wafers, where contaminants reduce yield and affect processor speeds. Removing contaminants, which can be measured in parts per billion, from rinse water with UV light is not a new idea in the semiconductor fabrication industry, but what Hanovia has achieved is claimed to be a major advance in the performance of this technology. Conventional lamps only manage to convert 0.2 per cent of energy into useful UV light, whereas the new lamp delivers more than 10 per cent.

The company’s award-winning SuperTOC system has been adapted by many of the world’s leading semiconductor fabricators and Hanovia has more than 500 systems operating globally. In September 2000 the company won its largest single order for this type of equipment, valued at approximately £630,000 from a chip-maker in Taiwan. Exports account for more than 65 per cent of Hanovia’s total production.

Hanovia’s managing director, Jon McClean, said: “Before we developed the SuperTOC lamp, everyone was trying to treat electronics rinse water with ultraviolet lamps that were originally developed for ink curing or water disinfection.

“Those lamps are designed for killing waterborne diseases, and unfortunately most of the energy put into them gets turned into wavelengths that have no effect at all on chemical impurities.” By experimenting with different types of quartz glass, proprietary chemical additives, lamp geometries and electrode designs, Hanovia’s research team produced the Super TOC lamp.

“What we have achieved is a step change in the performance of this technology,” said McClean.

The practical benefits, he said, is that his company can build high-purity water treatment systems for chip-makers that are much smaller, much more economical to purchase and operate, and considerably more efficient than other systems.