“Customers were scrapping machines and we thought — could we harvest them for parts? We knew other customers who still needed those components, and that’s really how we started.”
Niels Morch, Head of IES Semiconductor Parts
When a critical ion implanter goes down in a production environment, the clock starts ticking. Every hour of unplanned downtime carries a cost — in lost wafers, delayed orders, and the mounting pressure on a maintenance team to get the tool back online.
For engineers maintaining legacy semiconductor equipment, the search for parts can be the hardest part of the job. Original equipment manufacturers phase out support for older platforms. Authorised distributors run out of stock. And the part you need — a power supply, a control board, a beam source component — may no longer appear anywhere on the official supply chain.
That is the problem IES Semiconductor Parts was built to solve.
Our semiconductor parts business draws directly on accumulated expertise — and on an extensive inventory of components harvested from used semiconductor equipment — to help fabs, engineers, and equipment managers around the world keep their ion implanters running.
IES has been working with ion implanters since the company was founded in 1991. Over the decades, the business built deep knowledge of specific tool platforms — particularly medium and high-current implanters from manufacturers including Applied Materials, Axcelis, and Varian. That hands-on experience, built through hundreds of installations, relocations, and maintenance projects, gave the team an unusually detailed understanding of how these machines work and what they need to keep working.
The semiconductor parts business grew out of that work organically. As major fabs began retiring large numbers of legacy tools, IES saw an opportunity that most of the industry was overlooking.
What started as a practical response to a gap in the market has grown into one of the most focused ion implanter parts operations in the world. IES Semiconductor Parts now holds thousands of components for legacy platforms, manages an active global sourcing network, and offers a repair and testing service that is virtually unmatched outside of the OEMs themselves.
It might seem counterintuitive that a machine manufactured in the 1990s still has a place on a modern production floor. But in semiconductor manufacturing, the economics of mature process nodes tell a different story.
The leading-edge fabs run by the likes of Intel and TSMC move to new generations of equipment constantly. But a large proportion of global semiconductor production — across automotive, defence, medical devices, and power electronics — takes place on mature nodes where the process requirements have not changed significantly in decades. For those fabs, the capital cost and operational disruption of replacing an entire implanter platform is rarely justified when the tools themselves are still performing well.
“These machines that were sold in the nineties are actually still out in the field, all of them. They were very well made. And if you can keep supporting the parts, they will keep the machines running. It’s really quite remarkable when you think about it — you wouldn’t expect to see thirty-year-old manufacturing tools in a modern factory in any other industry, but in semiconductor they do a perfect job.”
Niels Morch, Head of IES Semiconductor Parts
The challenge those fabs face is that the mainstream supply chain has largely moved on. OEMs have discontinued parts for older platforms. The specialist knowledge required to maintain these tools is becoming harder to find. And the cost of getting it wrong — a tool-down situation with no clear route to a part — can run to thousands or tens of thousands of pounds in lost production before the machine is back online.
IES Semiconductor Parts exists specifically to serve that part of the market. Our customers include fabs running legacy tools that they intend to keep running for as long as possible, OEMs who still receive support requests for discontinued platforms, and the network of brokers, resellers, and independent engineers who support semiconductor equipment worldwide.
The most reliable source of discontinued semiconductor parts is one that is rarely discussed openly: the careful harvest of components from retired and decommissioned used semiconductor equipment.
When a major fab retires a generation of ion implanters, Many of them become completely redundant. Each one contains components that are still in serviceable condition — or that can be restored to specification through cleaning and refurbishment. For a company like IES, with the field expertise to assess, disassemble, and test that equipment safely, those machines represent a significant and otherwise inaccessible supply of parts.
Beyond large-scale acquisitions, IES Semiconductor Parts operates a constant and systematic programme of parts sourcing. Our team monitors global markets continuously, maintains relationships with trusted suppliers and brokers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and responds quickly when parts of known value become available.
We also manufacture replacement parts for components that are no longer available anywhere on the secondary market. Where a component is both highly desirable and genuinely unobtainable, IES Semiconductor Parts invests in the tooling, testing, and trialling required to produce a reliable replacement. It is a significant undertaking, but it is necessary if we are to keep supporting platforms where certain parts have simply ceased to exist.
Any supplier can claim that their parts are tested. What matters is what that testing actually involves — and whether the supplier has the equipment and expertise to test components at the level that semiconductor applications demand.
IES Semiconductor Parts has invested in a dedicated parts repair centre, fitted with specialised test jigs and equipment designed specifically for ion implanter components. That includes the ability to replicate key elements of a live machine for testing purposes, which allows us to validate components — including control boards, power supplies, and high-voltage assemblies — in conditions that reflect real operating requirements.
The repair service is led by engineers with exceptional depth of knowledge in ion implanter systems, including electronics, electrical systems, and mechanical assemblies. That combination of specialist expertise and a fully equipped test facility means IES Semiconductor Parts can support repair work that most other parts suppliers are simply not equipped to attempt.
For engineers who have experienced the frustration of receiving a repaired part that fails on reinstallation — at significant cost in time and downtime — that level of verification matters considerably.
What distinguishes IES Semiconductor Parts from a conventional parts broker is not simply inventory depth or testing capability. It is the fact that our parts business sits within a company that has been involved in semiconductor equipment across its entire working life.
IES installs new ion implanters for OEMs. We relocate tools between fabs. We decontaminate and decommission equipment at end of life. We maintain tools in the field with our own team of field service engineers. And through IES Semiconductor Parts, we supply and repair the components that keep those tools running in between.
That breadth of involvement means that when a customer comes to us about a part, they are not dealing with a catalogue-based broker who has never seen the inside of an implanter. They are talking to engineers who have installed, serviced, and decommissioned those platforms — and who understand the context in which the part will be used.
That relationship-led approach also shapes how IES Semiconductor Parts handles sourcing on behalf of customers. If a part is not in stock, the search does not end there. IES Semiconductor Parts will draw on its global network of trusted suppliers and partners — including relationships built over years of parts trading across Europe, Asia, and the Americas — to find the component the customer needs.
IES Semiconductor Parts works with a wide range of customers across the semiconductor equipment supply chain.
We sell to customers in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and beyond. Our global network of partners means that even where a customer prefers to work through a local intermediary, IES Semiconductor Parts is often the original source of the component they receive.
IES Semiconductor Parts holds an extensive inventory of ion implanter components, including parts for legacy platforms no longer supported by the original manufacturer. Every part in our inventory is inspected and tested before it is made available to customers.
If you are struggling to source a component for a legacy ion implanter, or if you want to discuss your parts strategy for a specific platform, we would be glad to help.
Visit IES Semiconductor Parts or get in touch with our team to discuss your requirements.