The vacuum specialist Leybold was founded by Ernst Leybold in Cologne in 1850. This year, the manufacturer is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Leybold's core competencies include the development and manufacture of standardized, individual solutions for vacuum generation and process gas conveying as well as customer-specific vacuum systems. The vacuum expert's components, systems and services play an important role in industrial coating, analytics and research and development processes.
Ernst Leybold founded industrial vacuum technology
With its registration in Cologne, Leybold became the founder of industrial vacuum technology. In 1906, Ernst Leybold's successors, in collaboration with Dr. Wolfgang Gaede, achieved a breakthrough in vacuum technology: for example, with the basic principle of the turbomolecular pump (1911) and the application of the diffusion pump (1913), both of which are still in use today. The gas ballast device for pumping vapors, patented in 1935, is also still in use. In 1870, the company was sold and continued under the name "E. Leybold's Nachfolger". In September 2016, the Swedish company Atlas Copco AB acquired 100 percent of Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum.
Industrial use of the vacuum
Vacuum metallurgy began in 1913: Dr. Wilhelm Rohn, head of the physical testing laboratory at W.C. Heraeus GmbH, developed a process for melting high-purity metals in a vacuum in Hanau, which was patented in 1918. In 1931, Wilhelm Carl Heraeus succeeded in vaporizing metals on glass - this paved the way for vacuum coating technology. Subsequently, vacuum technology was increasingly used in process engineering.
Areas of application undergoing structural change
The currently relevant applications of vacuum technology in structural change include metallurgy, the automotive and coating industries, solar, display and food applications, analytics and processes for the production of lithium-ion batteries for electromobility.