B. Nacke, University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany
The use of EPM technologies is well known in conventional steel applications like melting, casting, forming and treating. More and more also other areas of the metal industry have found a big interest in the application of EPM technologies. In the last years EPM methods with the use of electromagnetic fields were developed also for the semiconductor production in crystal growing and wafer treatment. Special application of EPM were developed for low conductive materials like oxides and glasses.
The presentation shows examples of new applications of EPM in metal, oxide and semiconductor processing. Typical new applications are in metal strip heating and treatment, in induction hardening of complex work-pieces like gears used in automotive and aircraft industries, in melting applications for high-tech materials, in semiconductor processing for micro and power electronic circuits or photovoltaic cells, in skull melting of oxides and glasses for high pure material qualities.
The examples show beside the interesting fact that EPM technologies have found a lot of new areas in industrial production processes also that efficient simulation tools are necessary in order to analyze, to design and to optimize EPM technology processes. Together with the technical problems and results of the different examples also design and optimizing techniques are shown in the presentation which allow to find out the right EPM process in comparison to the requirements of industry concerning the technical quality of the production and the final product on one hand but also the economical aspect of the production on the other hand.
