AET Group will consolidate its activities on a single site by 2022 to accelerate its development

Tailor-made and technical

For nearly fifty years, AET Technologies has been putting its industrial know-how at work for major clients in order to solve their problems. “We design customised industrial furnaces from A to Z. Generally, people turn to us when they have tried all the existing solutions. We develop these products for a specific request, so usually only one time and for one customer, whether it is to test materials before a full-scale production process, or to test materials in a severe atmosphere to simulate extreme temperatures or negative pressure, etc.”. The added value of AET Technologies comes from its perfect mastery of homogeneous temperature rise, the management of negative atmospheres (to depollute the air or simulate the vacuum of space) as well as the regulation and control systems. “We can produce furnaces that rise from 100° per second to 2000°, maintain the temperature and bring it down very quickly, and measure it to the nearest millisecond, with a gradient not exceeding 1.5°. Two thirds of its customers are R&D centres, such as the CEA, the CNRS and industrial companies like STMicroelectronics and Arcelor, among others.

A unique oxidation technology for LiDARs

While AET Technologies is a major player among manufacturers of specialised industrial furnaces, its subsidiary Aloxtec goes even further. “We design oxidation furnaces for one of the most important technological components – the VCSEL (for vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) used in the design of remote sensing and telemetry by LiDAR lasers. In concrete terms, Aloxtec’s technology will be used in one of a dozen or so steps in the development of the VCSEL. “We will oxidise an intermediate layer in our furnace and we will measure the level of oxidation to the nearest micron in order to stop it by the second. If we oxidise too much, we block the hole where the laser beam passes through, and if it’s not enough, we lose precision. In this market, which is particularly buoyant in view of the industrial recovery, especially in electronics in the broad sense, Aloxtec has a considerable lead with its technological innovation, with 60% to 70% of the world market share in its sector. In order to meet the growing demand, the AET Technologies subsidiary plans to recruit engineers and project managers on a massive scale, mainly over the next four to five years. With 52 people, 42 of whom work for AET Technologies, 7 for Aloxtec and 3 for Pyrox, the group is looking forward to a bright future!