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Patent 6,001,224 covers techniques for arc handling and control. This patent builds on patents previously granted to Advanced Energy in the area of arc management. Arcs are unintended power spikes that can damage equipment and product materials. Preventing and managing arcs alleviates expensive problems associated with lost productivity and arc-damaged materials and tools

Patent 6,007,879 covers techniques for target conditioning using high-power dc. This patent addresses the issue of fast, high quality target conditioning in plasma sputtering applications. For high quality, high yield sputtering to occur, targets must be conditioned, that is, made free of impurities and topographical variations. Yet the time taken to condition a target is lost manufacturing time. Reducing the target conditioning cycle leads directly to increased production time.

With these two patents, Advanced Energy has been granted a total of 25 patents to date.

Advanced Energy is a worldwide leader in the development and marketing of power conversion and control system solutions, ion-beam sources, and plasma abatement systems. Customers throughout the world use Advanced Energy's products where plasma-based thin film technology is a critical function in their manufacturing process. These applications include the manufacture of semiconductors, CD-ROMs, DVDs, compact disks, flat panel displays, disk drives, and optical and architectural glass. In addition, Advanced Energy provides the power conversion and control system solutions of choice to a growing number of general applications in the medical, instrumentation, telecommunications, automotive, food packaging, and tool industries. Founded in 1981, AE is a publicly held company traded on Nasdaq under the symbol AEIS.