Production Standards Lenzburg: ABB's state-of-the-art factory in Lenzburg manufactures high-power semiconductors. It features a "class 10" cleanroom which is 500 times cleaner than a surgery room. HVDC Light uses a special kind of semiconductors, Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT), which are a core component of a system and ensure reliable switching operations.

Passivation (synthetic coating) of high power bipolar semiconductor wafer edge.

After a coating step, the wafers are patterned using a wet etching process through a photomask. Switching functions are embedded in the wafer.

Silicon wafers metalized on both sides using electron beam evaporators are the raw material of power semiconductors - switches that very precisely turn electrical current on and off. Semiconductors are found in everything from cell phones and computers to heavy industrial machines and HVDC power transmission systems.

Turning single silicon chips into power modules begins with soldering them onto substrates. Chips and solder preforms are manually positioned before soldering takes place in a hydrogen atmosphere.