Inside Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) advanced chip factory, a robotic arm lifts a 12-inch silicon wafer—worth up to $10,000—and places it into a wafer carrier for transport to the next manufacturing step. The carrier’s job seems simple: hold the wafer without damaging it. But there’s a hidden danger: if the carrier contains even tiny amounts of impurities, those impurities could transfer to the wafer, causing microscopic defects that ruin the chip. To prevent this, TSMC and other top semiconductor makers rely on a surprising material: Armco SLH Pure Iron, the "wafer guardian" that keeps chips clean and manufacturing efficient.

Why is Armco SLH Pure Iron the top choice for wafer carriers? The answer lies in its ultra-high purity and low impurity leaching—two traits that are non-negotiable in semiconductor manufacturing. A single impurity atom on a silicon wafer can break a transistor, rendering a $10,000 wafer useless. Armco SLH Pure Iron has a purity of 99.999%, meaning it contains less than 0.001% of impurities like carbon, sulfur, copper, or nickel. Even more importantly, it doesn’t leach impurities when exposed to the high temperatures (up to 400°C) and chemicals used in chip manufacturing. In tests by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) organization, Armco SLH carriers released less than 0.0001 mg of impurities per square centimeter over 1,000 hours of use—far below the SEMI standard of 0.001 mg/cm².

Another key advantage is Armco SLH’s thermal compatibility with silicon. Silicon wafers have a thermal expansion coefficient of 2.6 × 10⁻⁶/°C. If the carrier’s thermal expansion coefficient is too different, the carrier and wafer will expand or contract at different rates when heated or cooled, causing the wafer to crack or warp. Armco SLH Pure Iron has a thermal expansion coefficient of 11.8 × 10⁻⁶/°C—close enough to silicon that the carrier and wafer move in sync during manufacturing. This may seem like a small detail, but it’s critical: TSMC reports that using Armco SLH carriers has reduced wafer cracking by 40% compared to carriers made from aluminum or stainless steel.

The design of Armco SLH wafer carriers is just as precise as the material itself. To avoid scratching the wafer, the carrier’s contact points are polished to a smoothness of 0.02 micrometers—roughly 500 times smoother than a human hair. Some carriers also include tiny channels that allow gas to flow around the wafer, preventing dust from settling on its surface. Each carrier is inspected using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to ensure there are no scratches, dents, or impurities before it’s used in the factory. "A single flaw in the carrier can ruin an entire wafer," says Dr. James Lin, a materials engineer at TSMC. "With Armco SLH, we rarely find flaws—its consistency is unmatched."

Armco SLH Pure Iron’s role in semiconductors isn’t limited to wafer carriers. It’s also used in the "shadow masks" that protect parts of the wafer during metal deposition—the process of adding thin metal layers to create electrical circuits. Shadow masks must be ultra-thin (just 0.1 mm thick) and have precise holes to ensure the metal is deposited in the right places. Armco SLH’s high ductility—its ability to be stretched into thin sheets without breaking—makes it ideal for this job. Unlike stainless steel, which can crack when rolled into thin sheets, Armco SLH retains its strength even at 0.1 mm thick. This allows manufacturers to create shadow masks with holes as small as 5 micrometers—critical for making advanced chips with billions of transistors.

As the semiconductor industry races to make smaller, faster chips (now down to 3-nanometer technology), the demand for Armco SLH Pure Iron is growing. In 2024, Armco announced a new factory in South Korea—close to Samsung’s chip plants—to produce semiconductor-grade SLH Pure Iron. The factory will have the capacity to make 5,000 tons of Armco SLH per year, enough to supply 80% of the global semiconductor industry’s needs. "Chips are the backbone of the digital age," says Michael Johnson, Armco’s CEO. "And Armco SLH Pure Iron is the backbone of chip manufacturing. We’re proud to be part of making the technology that powers our world."

For most people, chips are just tiny components inside their phones or laptops. But behind every chip is a material that ensures it’s made correctly—one that’s pure enough, strong enough, and precise enough to protect the wafer from start to finish. Armco SLH Pure Iron may not be a household name, but it’s the reason your phone works, your laptop runs, and the digital world keeps turning. It’s the unsung hero of the semiconductor industry—and it’s only going to become more important as chips get smaller and more advanced.

SLH was founded in 2006. One of the largest sellers of High Purity Iron (Armco Iron) in China. SLH is now focusing on producing and selling High Purity Iron for Remelting Usage and Electronic Applications, they are widely used in producing high-quality alloy metals, magnetic materials, special steel etc., Sales amount has reached more than $150 million each year.

We provide users with various specifications and models of electrical pure iron round steel (￠10mm-￠180mm), electromagnetic pure iron plates, pure iron coils (≠0.5mm-≠250mm), electrical pure iron forgings (￠100mm-￠350mm), electrical pure iron wire rods (￠2mm-￠42mm), electrical pure iron slabs (220*1250*3000), electromagnetic pure iron cold-drawn straight bars (￠3.0mm-￠50mm), raw pure iron square billets (40*40*500, 50*50*500, 70*70*600, 110*110*600, 140*140*600, 220*220*1250, 250*250*1250), etc.

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