 And we hear the ID TechEx show. Hi. Oh, hi. Yes. My name is Alex and I'm here with Alvac. Alvac is a Japanese corporation that is based in Chiba Sake, Japan, which is about 30-40 miles off Tokyo. Do you do these kind of things at the company? Yeah, so the company, the core technology is in making vacuum, creating the vacuum, maintaining the vacuum. And how to utilize that environment for the position process. That is our core technology in a nutshell. With the position of the materials that is used in the semiconductor applications for the display application, for advanced electronics application. This time in the ID Tech, we have focus on two major equipments that are mainly used for battery manufacturing. So we have one equipment which uses the roll-to-roll process. It's an evaporation type of tool. Instead of having the lithium and copper foil being laminated together, we would deposit the lithium on top of the copper foil to make it much higher efficiency, much better performance, and much higher capacity properties of the battery. In a very high volume production. And then, on the other hand, we are also introducing and we are also having our, what we call the PVD tool, as a sputter tool, as a cluster chamber tool, where we have many different processes. And we make a solid-state battery that can be utilized for very small form factor, very small IoT type of devices. And it's a safe battery because it's a solid state, so there's no electrolyte, there's no danger of catching fire or anything in a very safe material. How do you, which part of the solid-state battery do you enable? We enable the manufacturing of the battery. We are not a battery manufacturer, but for the companies who are making the battery, we have a solution, a high volume manufacturer tool that can be used on their production. Is it this one? This is the tool. Yes, and you have like six chambers configuration. Each chamber is dedicated for one type of process. And this is for mass production or is it just for prototyping? This is for mass production. So it's automated, it's kind of like robotic? This is fully automated. The material would go inside the tool. Once it gets inside, it's fully automated. We have the robot that's transferred. It's all under vacuum, the whole process finishes. When it comes out, you have all the layers being deposited and can go for post-processing to make the battery. So does this have to do with vacuum? It's all under vacuum process. It's all about vacuum. Once it goes inside, this entire environment here is under vacuum. How do you make vacuum? How does that work? You pump the air out, how does that work? Yes. What we have shown here is when the equipment is open, just for easier visualization. But what you have here, this rose, is where you would have the copper foil that would be attached here, goes inside the chamber. The chamber then is sealed, obviously, and closed. You have the pumps that sits outside of the equipment and the pumps, again, our core technology, how to make the vacuum, how to maintain the vacuum in a high quality. And then we create a vacuum environment inside that chamber. And this you've been doing for 60 years? Yes, the company has over 60 years. What was the point of doing... What was the use case 60 years ago to do vacuum? Is it like... So this is a very... This might be... No, one of the uses of this technology for the vacuum, right after World War II, when we had actually a lot of the American military that was stationed in Japan. And one of the things that the Americans liked was orange juice. However, to transport orange juice to Japan, you would imagine for all that volume and in juice format, it would take a lot of cost. So one of the utilizations, it's when it happens where people are very familiar with the tang, when you do the freeze dry. So you would take the juice of the orange, freeze dry, make it in a powder format, and then once you add the water, you're basically adding the water back to the orange juice. And there we go. That's one of the utilizations, how you use the vacuum type of process. Nice to do some nice orange juice. That was the beginning. One of the applications they started. And then there was another application that we started working with, was actually with the MIT. The MIT had a very high technology based on vacuum, and we started to work with them in terms of technology transfer. There was a great collaboration between the US and Japan. And we've been working with them a long time ago. This is in 1950s, that's how we started the collaboration. So this is the cutting edge of solid-state battery. This is the most advanced solid-stage battery stuff happening right now? I would say so in terms of high volume manufacturing and for solid-state battery, that you are able to do the whole process under vacuum conditions and having all the layers being deposited at once. And what is this? This is a different application that instead of having in a small form factor, you could have a big panel. Imagine that you have a big piece of glass that you would go vertically through all the different chambers and you're deposited from the sides. You can deposit on both sides of the glass as it passes through the equipment. And that one there? Yeah, so another way is instead of having vertically, the panel would go horizontally. And instead of having both sides being deposited, you're only more interested in depositing on one side of the glass. So UVAC is enabling stuff that's in like millions or billions of things, right? That is correct. You're doing big quantities and stuff. Yes, that is correct. We make the equipment that's enabling the process that is used today for all the devices and the manufacturer in the semiconductor application. All the monitors and the TVs that you have in your houses today, they're a very great chance that they pass through our equipment because all the films that are deposited, it's using the UVAC technology. Does that mean it passed through Japan or it passed through? You have your machines all over the world? We have all over the world. Our company is about 6,500 people. We have offices in U.S., Europe, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Malaysia, just to mention a few of them. And we are in a variety of applications. And you by far like the world leader and vacuum and all this stuff? We would like to say so. As you can see, the name of the company is ALVAC, which stands for Automated Vacuum. That's how we keep the core technology as the base. And how do we expand from the vacuum that's used in many different processes that could benefit from that environment? What do you sacrifice with the organic there? Well, the sacrificial layer is a nomenclature that you use before you have this layer that is attached at the bottom of the substrate. But you need to do the patterning. So that's used as a sacrificial layer so you can do the patterning. So we just remove the layer in a very precise, smooth way. And this is another type of equipment that we manufacture. We manufacture, as a matter of fact, here in the U.S. We call them viral because it's a dry etching. So there's no use of wet chemicals that is used. So it's a dry process. So it's good for the environment. That's how we call it in viral. And we also make in the U.S. the etching tools that can be used for microfluidics. In this case, that we have an example here that is based on a glass etching which is a very difficult material to etch. But we were able to develop a technology again that is under vacuum and can produce these great results. So how is it for you to be here at the I.D.T.K. show? There's a lot of people to network with. Yeah, we have been attending this show for many years and we've seen how the industry has evolved. We like to be part of the show because we see all the new applications. People that are coming with new usages of the devices, of the sensors. And everything starts with an equipment that we make. And in this show we can see how we come from the initial device to the end application so we are very connected with our customers as well.