About Glow Research

Glow Research manufactures the OptiGlow, AutoGlow and the SputterGlow plasma systems.  Along with manufacturing and support new plasma equipment, Glow Research has  taken over the service and parts support for several of the older Nordson MARCH plasma systems.  Providing rebuilt plasma systems as well as new plasma systems allows Glow Research to meet the needs and budgets of our Customers.  

Odean Hefta repairing a March Plasmod

Glow Research started producing the AutoGlow in 2007, and the first systems were purchased primarily by Universities.  Through time, the Customer list has grown to include several Customers that use the AutoGlow and the OptiGlow in production applications…attesting to both the popularity and the reliability of Glow Research systems. 

The individuals that make up Glow Research came from the semiconductor industry, where it is common for plasma systems to cost well over a million dollars, and the demand for high performance and uptime is unrelenting.  Glow Research systems are designed to meet that demanding mentality.  Highly reliable plasma systems are provided for both lab and productions use.  

All Glow Research systems are modular for easy module exchange, should there be a problem at a Customer site.  This allows Glow Research to keep cost down, avoid field failures and provide our Customers with robust and trouble free plasma systems.  All systems are provided with diagnostics and status lights that help confirm all modules are working correctly.   

Above all, every customer must be satisfied.

Glow Research is an Arizona, USA-based corporation started in 2007 with the goal of bring the high reliability and uptime of production semiconductor plasma etching equipment to various lab and industrial markets.

Glow Research is efficiently structured to keep cost down and pass on the savings to our Customers through low prices for plasma equipment. Odean Hefta, with over 20 years of experience in field service engineering, and working with such companies as Tegal and Motorola, has responsibility for rebuilding and testing all rebuilt plasma systems.

Glow Research has personnel who will assist with the installation and start-up of your system and interpreters are available for technical support.  Replacement/repair components can be ordered through Glow Research.

The Glow Research shipping department plays a key roll ensuring that systems reach their destination throughout the world in the same condition as when they came out of final test at our customer support center.

All systems are wrapped, and double bagged to clean room standards.   Jesse Whitlock is in charge of the shipping department, and makes sure delicate items are double boxed and well packed. All crates are extremely durable and conform to international standards.

From design, production, test, documentation, support, shipping, and Customer support…Glow Research has the right combination of products and support to ensure the satisfaction of every Customer.   

Contact Glow Research for information about any type of plasma reactor; small or large batch, R&D, single substrate, single wafer and production plasma systems. Glow Research has many avenues to solve your needs including new, remanufactured and R&D equipment solutions.

Glow Research also provides rebuilt plasma systems, parts and services for a variety of plasma systems with repair capability down to the component level. All plasma systems are factory tested and then must pass further testing by Odean Hefta’s Field Service Department prior to shipment.

SputterGlow Development:  Production of the SuptterGlow plasma sputter deposition system started in 2010, with the goal of supplying the R&D market with a reasonably priced sputter deposition system for dilectrics and metals.   Our first Customer, Arizona State University, needed a system to deposit nitride for a solar cell application.   John Reche, with a long history of building sputtering systems, has led the design and manufacturing team with his ideas and experience.   John has many years of experience in sputtering, photolithography, related microelectronics fabrication processes and thin-film optics.   Here is some background on John Reche:

John Reche

John started development projects using polyimides as dielectrics for thin-film products.   At the time, work with polyimides was limited to a few large research labs such as RCA, Bell Labs, IBM, TI or Hitachi that applied for a patent using PIQ (Poly-Isoindolo-Quinazolinedione) as ILD (Inner Layer Dielectric) to build bipolar integrated circuits. Since then, John has worked with dozens of commercial or experimental polyimides, as well as many other types of high temperature polymers.

John set-up his first complete sputtering and photolitho thin film R&D processing lab at GTE-Lenkurt in Vancouver, Canada. In this lab, he built experimental circuits using polyimide as cross-over dielectric. These circuits combined thick and thin-film hybrid technologies and flip-chip semiconductors supplied by Cherry’s and Motorola. The purpose of the experiment was to provide a simple and reliable interlayer dielectric for two-layers interconnects.

 Later,John joined the magnetic thin-film head development group of Memorex in Santa-Clara (CA), where his responsibilities included developing polyimide insulated copper coils and finding a suitable ceramic material as substrate. Alumina titanium carbide was selected because it was the only non-porous material machinable, albeit with some difficulties, since its only use at the time was to make tool bits for metal machining.

John has built thin-film flip-chip memory modules with four polyimide layers and four interconnect copper layers for Hughes Aircraft Electro-Optics Division. This work led to the planning of a multichip module company.

 His thin-film work led to building half a dozen clean rooms, sputtering equipment and control software for the machines. He also worked in thin-film optics, magneto-optics for data recording, and built Nd-Yag lasers. His thesis goal was to explore the fabrication of eeproms based on trapping charges between two dielectric layers. The dielectric layers were obtained by plasma anodizing a thin layer of aluminum deposited over silicon. Plasma anodization proceeded until all the aluminum formed a stoichiometric aluminum oxide with a thin layer of silicon anodized below it.

 John holds seven US patents and three international patents. He authored over 60 technical papers and presentations at technical meetings.  John obtained a Bachelor and a Master of Applied Sciences in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His thesis was entitled: “The Preparation And Properties of rf-Plasma Anodized SiO2 & Al2O3 Thin Films and Al-Si Schottky Photodiodes”.