AE bets on ‘revolutionary’ tech

FORT COLLINS — Advanced Energy Industries Inc. (Nasdaq: AEIS) has quietly invested $1.5 million in a technology that purportedly eliminates the need for vacuums in the computer-chip-making process.

The technology was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory by Gary Selwyn, founder of APJet Inc., based in Santa Fe, N.M.

The investment in APJet is a joint endeavor between AE, which makes equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, and Air Products & Chemicals of Allentown, Penn., a company that produces gases used in the semiconductor industry.

The two companies put $1.5 million each into APJet’s Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet. AE is keeping mum…