Ceramics & Glasses

Thermic Edge Ltd is a design and manufacturing business with specialist knowledge of every kind of laboratory heating applications, from basic elements or sample heaters, to complete hot stages with rotation, manipulation and substrate bias. We have standard ranges of stand alone sample heaters and flange mounted sample heaters with feedthroughs incorporated. Our sample heaters and hot stages are used in a very wide range of laboratory applications including, PVD sputtering, thermal deposition, e-beam, CVD, MOCVD, PLD, ion beam implanters, carbon nanotubes and graphene growth.

Thermic Edge Ltd can offer a range of sample heater controllers to accurately control any kind of hot stage or sample heater. Heater controllers are fitted with Eurotherm PID temperature controllers as standard, but we can incorporate any type of controller that our customers might specify.

Thermic Edge Ltd  also has a range of high temperature laboratory vacuum / inert atmosphere furnaces with graphite hot zones. These furnaces can heat a crucible or wafer to 2100C. All furnaces are plc controlled and are fully interlocked, with simple one button pump / vent operation. A choice of PID temperature controllers enables a high degree of control and programmable temperature ramping and cooling functions. Dual zone temperature control on flat wafer furnaces gives very high uniformity across the substrate.
We can offer a complete range of technical ceramic materials and components including Shapal, Macor, Alumina, Boron Nitride, Aluminium nitride and Quartz. We can also offer CVD produced ceramics such as pyrotytic boron nitride PBN and pyrolytic graphite.

Twente Solid State Technology (TSST) was founded in 1998 as a spin-off company from the University of Twente, and offers high quality thin film solutions. As a result TSST products can now be found around the world.

TSST wants to contribute to the progress in the worldwide scientific community of advanced thin film materials by providing state-of-the-art deposition equipment, with focus on pulsed laser deposition, and developing and sharing relevant expertise

The company is specialised in design and production of customised thin film deposition equipment, specifically Pulsed Laser Deposition equipment for advanced studies. An example is the use of Reflection High Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) under high-pressure conditions, which gives real-time information about the surface morphology during depositions.

Every system can be controlled through a central console, giving full control of all parameters involved. This allows the rapid replication of settings and depositions, which results a higher reliability in less time.

Apart from the equipment, the company also produces ceramic thin films, and offers services for research in the field of ceramic thin films, such as the surface treatment of ceramic substrates. TSST is able to provide these services due to the strong cooperation with the MESA+ institute at the University of Twente.