S01-E04 Kevin - RIT Semiconductor Nanofabrication Laboratory

In this episode, you’ll meet Kevin, a technician with a background in construction and nanotechnology. Kevin discusses his transition from construction to vacuum technology, highlighting his education at Erie Community College and the Kurt Lesker vacuum certification. Kevin shares troubleshooting experiences at RIT, including fixing a plasma etcher by identifying a leaking gate valve. Kevin emphasizes the importance of understanding vacuum systems and knowing when to seek expert help. He also talks about starting his own company and how working in research has challenges and opportunities compared to working in production.

Transcript

Peter Kazarinoff  0:00  
Peter from the Technicians in Vacuum Technologies Project, this is Troubleshooting Technicians, a podcast about technicians working in the vacuum industry: the work they do and how they troubleshoot. I'm your host, Peter Kazarinoff. I teach technicians and engineers at Portland Community College. In this episode, you'll meet Kevin. Kevin has worked in the Rochester Institute of Technology or RIT clean room in vacuum technology. Kevin, welcome to the podcast.

Kevin  0:38  
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Peter Kazarinoff  0:40  
So Kevin, kind of to get started. Can you give me a little bit of your background? How did you get involved in the vacuum industry?

Kevin  0:49  
Um, I had worked in construction inspection for 20 years engineering. My son was born. I decided I wanted to raise them, so I decided to leave my career, and my wife basically took on the burden at the same time I did that the nanotechnology program started at Erie Community College in Genesee Community College, and I had always wanted to be in science. I figured it was my chance, and so I went through the program. After graduating, I was fortunate enough to hook up with a startup company called sim poor that makes membranes, and they hired me, and a lot of it had to do with the Kurt lesker certifications I had. They needed someone who actually knew how to fix stuff. They had engineers, they just didn't have technicians. So I basically from there, I got to sit in our at s MFL, their fab clean room every day. That's where our office was. Me and my boss would every day we'd be in that clean room for four years straight. After a while, I chose the left and now I am starting a company in the semiconductor industry, and I'm going through the patents and the funding and all of that right now.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:58  
Oh my goodness, Kevin, that is like quite a journey. So let's dig into a little bit of those experiences, and then we're going to go kind of deep into one year troubleshooting problems. So you mentioned that you did some work at Erie Community College and that you did Lester vacuum program. Can you talk to me a little bit more about what you learned in those programs, and then what you took away with that to your next professional role, and then some like, additional things that you needed in that professional role, like, what did you learn in those education programs?

Kevin  2:31  
Um, you know, I'll say, you know, while Erie Community College and GCC had a joint nanotechnology program, and I know now I don't think GCC is part of it, which is a shame. But those programs, fortunately for me, I've been around. I built concrete plants, asphalt plants, so I knew pneumatics, hydraulics, so I already had the basic concept of what it was. But the, you know, the Curt lusker just reinforced it, you know, like, what's a virtual leak, what's a real weak, you know. And it was a good solid basis, where I could walk in and understand at least what someone was talking about. You know, as far as the troubleshooting, you're never going to know any of that until you get the experience. And I'm sure Kurt Lester has other programs where they get into where the vacuums are actually hooked up to cooling units, machines. And there's, you know, once you put all those valves, all those pipes in, and all those, you know, FNC and electronics, that's where you start expanding your knowledge. They're giving you a solid base that you can use going in so you least understand what's going on. And then that'll hopefully motivate you to, and there's videos everywhere of everything to go online and start, you know, being curious.

Peter Kazarinoff  3:43  
Yeah, so, Kevin, so you've learned some of, like, the fundamentals, both at Erie Community College and then this Lester program, and you've got quite a background in construction. You mentioned, like building cement plants and working with different pneumatic hydraulic systems. What was that first job out of the Erie program and out of that les cure program, and what did what skills and sort of equipment did you use in that program that was different from your construction industry experience?

Kevin  4:17  
Well, I went from running asphalt players and doing testing to going to a startup. I mean, it was tough. I mean, the, you know, finding a job with a new degree like that, I have a new program. No one knows anything about it, and I just kept sending out applications. Was fortunate enough to meet out with a startup called simport. They made biological membranes. Had no idea what it meant, what they were, but because of my lusker certifications and my, you know, my, you know, my technical degree from EC C, they were apt to hire me for that. And on top of that, I was in workforce development, so they were able to get six months of advanced manufacturing pay. For in my training. So it was a win, win for everybody. I got a job, and they got paid to get me trained, and then I basically went into the clean room and they had me fabbing wafers. Basically, we take bare 400 micron silicon nitride, or we take bare 100 micron silicon dioxide, which are like so fragile. And I would basically go from bear way for cleaning all the way up to breakout, where I would actually break all the chips, all the membranes, out of the wafer, and package them, store them, review them, and in that process they, you know, I would help out the manager. When we had tools our group, we owned a sputterer, a functionality box, which is basically a little plasma oven. Those are the only tools we own. But we utilize 90% of the tools at RF, you know, at RIT. So we used every Etcher, Dre Rie, every kind of sputtering, every kind of deposition model, every cleaner, every alignment tool that, you know, the big nitride ovens, we always had to do a bunch of our own depositing. There a lot of stuff we did send out. As far as our tools. We had an HA magnetron sputter, which was really, really nice, with a load lock. And then we had, like I said, we had the functionality box. And the functionality box first showed up, it was basically just handed me and said, fix it, which I tried to. I went through all the things I could know from my experience and from, you know, what I learned at EC C, and I found out I can't fix board, so we had to send it out to get fixed. But I was the one who changed the oil, put fondant in it. I had to maintenance it, constantly, check the pipes whenever there's leaks. And it was kind of an octopus, because we, like, used a bunch of different functionalization methods. So that means a line for each different functionalization. So that's, you know, 90% of the time, that's where our leaks were. Was in us, adapting the machine to do our work. And at RIT, that's what you find. There's a lot of Frankenstein's laying around there. They keep a machine that's really good. They had one from the 70s and Etcher and our company, actually, it costs a lot of money when they got rid of it and brought in a new etc to figure it out. You know, people don't realize that you pull the machine that people have built the process on, and then you're like, Hey, we got a new one. It's shiny. You're like, oh, man, there's, like, a half a million dollars in DOE, just figuring out if we can still do what we needed to do. So it was, you know, like, I say I went in as you know, I wasn't, like, I was a nanotech so it was more of a fabricator, but they relied on my skills that I got back by lusker, you know, teaching his vacuum systems the ALD. And I imagine I'm missing a few. They were there a lot.

Peter Kazarinoff  7:50  
So, Kevin, you're working kind of in this research environment, although there are startup companies that are using some of those pieces of equipment, what are some of the like, unique and different requirements of working in that environment compared to working in a production environment, say, like working at Intel, at a factory that's up and running 24 hours a day. How do those research research environments add to the additional complications for someone who's working as a technician or an engineer?

Kevin  8:19  
Um, the biggest thing is, is use. You know, people would grant money that go to the university have priority over us. So if we have a tool set up, like we had an ALD that we bought, and we could only do our process in it, but the college didn't like that, because they want to be able to put all kinds of other stuff, but if they put the other stuff in, they ruin our process. So that's kind of why we had to buy certain tools so no one else could play with them, whereas you have to know. And fortunately, the engineers at simport was really amazing. They would put in a range that it would allow variability and still get the result from machine to machine, knowing that we're in this environment, that we can't trust anything. We had a PhD that was putting wax on his wafers, and he was told not to, and he threw, he threw it in the stepper, and I went in the vacuum system. It destroyed. You know, those are the kind of things you have to kind of think of, because now that steppers down, we have to reinvent our whole process. We were like saying, Hey, we were going to use the stepper three days in a row. In a row. Now we can't, you have to wait for, you know, so you constantly have those. We had a mariacher. That thing was beautiful. It's a malt combo machine, and we used it for one process. And God, helped those guys. They kept it running for us because we were the only ones who actually used it. We didn't have it. We wouldn't have been able to do one process, you know. So the beauty of working in RIT was I got to talk to people, and they thought I had a PhD, because they saw the level of work that I got exposed and I was just a technician, you know. It just makes you realize everybody's just people. Everybody can learn at different speeds. It's, I'm more of a visual person. I probably wouldn't have done well at RIT I realized that, you know, it's more a hands on thing, but I appreciated hanging out with the PhDs. I'd ask about their work. They'd ask about mine. We just, you know, share ideas. If I ran an etching profile on a machine, I would be nice enough to hand to the guy I know next to me that was using the same machine. So it builds a lot of commodity and you can really learn if you just listen and ask questions,

Peter Kazarinoff  10:28  
Right, right -

Kevin  10:29  
You know, it's a teaching institution, so no one ever you know, you know that dumb question. Don't ask a dumb question, but most of the dumb questions is what you need to answer so you can wrap your head around it.

Peter Kazarinoff  10:39  
Uh huh.

Kevin  10:40  
It's your learning process, not someone else's.

Peter Kazarinoff  10:43  
Right, so it sounds like it's both a collaborative environment, because a lot of people are working together, and everybody wants each other to succeed. But it also can kind of be a challenging environment, because there's so many users on any one piece of equipment, and also, maybe something is down that you didn't expect. So let's, like, dig into one of those kind of troubleshooting scenarios. Kevin, let's talk maybe about like an etcher, if you came into work, into that RIT teaching clean room with all those research tools, and one of the tools is down, can you explain to me, like a specific scenario that happened, and then what kind of troubleshooting steps did you use to get that tool back up and running?

Kevin  11:26  
We had an etcher that we used. They were research etchers new to us, so our it got a deal on them. You know, they're trying to push a product, and there was nothing terrible about them. But then eventually we started having all kinds of weird issues that you would not think were vacuum. You know, vacuum was fine. Everything was reading the computers, everything. So then they would come out because it was burning the resist and etching like a wave across it. They would change DC, you know, the bias Chuck they, you know, mess with the plasma, and they're, you know, constantly just thinking it's plasma. One day our me and my boss noticed that the plasma was firing orange. It normally fires blue or purple. Your your whatever you're putting into that chamber will dictate the color of your plasma, and the fact that it was orange was telling us we had to continue. So we had a leak somewhere. After all the money and all the maintenance that the company came out and fixed, they found out the gate valve was actually leaking and allowing contamination into the chamber, causing the burning and causing, you know, the color of the plasma. Once they fixed that, the actual went on to work fine, but for months they kept thinking it was something else. And it comes to find out it was just something that was attached to the vacuum system. And that's what we know a lot, like a lot of our situations, it was people need to realize, you know, lusker is great. They show you the one pump and, you know, maybe a turbo on it. But then there's cryogenic pumps. There's just so many different facets of pumps that could be interlocked depending on what the device needs to do. You have ion pumps, and then there's a litany of valves. You have, gate valves, throttle valves, controlling valves, then you got your MNT. So fortunately, RIT, they have great technicians, and then we're not allowed to work on the machines, but we can diagnose which they love, because they knew we knew what we were doing. And we'd be like, Hey, man, this is what's going on. And they wouldn't be starting from zero, going through that whole checklist, you know, figure it out. And also, the great thing is they had log books on everything they ever did, everything that ever was touched on that how they fixed it, you know. So you read through them. If you're sitting around, read through the log books. It's it'll teach you a lot about what's going on with machine. Make you understand. And if you're in a research you kind of need to teach these tools, like your kids, you know, you need to know everything about them because they're temperamental, yeah. I mean, especially if they're not yours, and you have to share them with other people, you know. And I mean, the senior year, they allow the students to come in, and they're breaking wafers in them, and it's expected, you know, you have to have to have mistakes to learn, you know. But a lot of times stuff gets left in them, you know, suck a piece of, you know, wafer into your, you know, into your rotary pump and, you know, hopefully it doesn't get to the turbo, you know, I mean, just those little things that, you know, most people don't notice, unless you're kind of in research, you're kind of, I that's why I really would push, you know, a lot of these kids trying to get into these big Fab Labs at universities, because they're needed. You can bring them in on rookie contracts, you know, and they just need to realize you're going to get a wealth of experience and knowledge that you'll be able to use to make bigger jumps in your life down the road.

Peter Kazarinoff  14:39  
So, Kevin, we've sort of talked about like two troubleshooting scenarios. One where you realize, like, it's one of these circuit boards and there's no way that you can fix it, or the other techs can fix it, and you have to send it out. And then another one, you identify this gate valve, maybe you can just change out the gate valve, order a new one from Lester and other vacuums. Supplier, and then you're like, good to go. How do you know, based on your years of experience, like, when just to let the problem go and you call in help, and when you can just keep working on it, and, like, figuring out yourself, do you know sort of like, like, a limit for you? Kevin, about like, when is it time to call in help, and when is it time to like, I can keep figuring this out.

Kevin  15:24  
Being from construction, we don't - time is money, so you make quick decisions, you know? I basically, I'll evaluate something and be like, yeah, that's over my head. Like, we had a plasma oven that we did functionalization in cleaning wafers, and when we first got it, it was running fine. All of a sudden it started acting kooky, and we just kept thinking, I had to do something with the valves. And come to buy find out the board was completely fried. I can't replace the I mean, I can replace the board, but I don't know enough. I mean, is it the whole board? Is it part of the board? Is it just a fuse? Is it just chip? And my engineers are micro ease, and they couldn't figure it out either. So at a certain point you have you hire people to be your experts. You got to take you realize that they can't do everything, and sometimes it's just faster to send it out and have that person fix it than you. We had an AOL, we had a RTP installed, and we could have set that up by ourselves. I mean, they sent a service guy out to set up, and we could have done it ourselves, you know. So there's instances where you're just coming out, hooking stuff up and walking away, you know, but then there's instances where you actually got to dig into it. But you know, when we first got the plasma box, it was my responsibility, because of my education at EC in the backing of the lusker certifications, to get it up and running, change the oil in it, you know, make sure everything's solid. And, you know, I did everything I could up until where a board starts opening up valves when it's not supposed to, and stuff like that. So again, you know, you have to know your limits. I mean, it's great to think you can know it all and fix it all. But there's experts for a reason. You know, there's certain people that really spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and it'll save you a lot of money, too.

Peter Kazarinoff  17:08  
Kevin, kind of to finish up today, I wanted to dig in a little bit more about how you went from working for as a technician in this research facility and now your own project idea. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Going from a technician and then starting your own company?

Kevin  17:26  
I left research. Had some personal stuff going on, and when I tried to go back in the market, it was hard to get back in because there's so many 20 year olds with bigger degrees. So at a certain point, I started looking at the stuff. I knew I am a good person at seeing like in research, you stare at a thing so long that you wouldn't think that thing could do something else. I realized in my work that I can make those things do a lot of cool things. So in the last three months, I put together processes, a huge IP portfolio, which I'm working with a lawyer right now. I'm doing all the provisionals on, and as soon as they're done, I'll be able to actually talk about it. But in the end, I'm creating a 3d quasi crystal structure, and that is going to open the world up to a lot of cool sensors and direct air proton engines and stuff like that. So I'm in the beginning stage, and hopefully within, you know, by next week, I'll be able to talk more about what I'm actually doing with people. You know, you got to protect yourself. You know, if you have a good idea and it's patentable, make sure you know, you protect yourself not to. You know, it's very easy for someone to step in and be like, Oh, I had that idea. You know, it's scary. But you know, all my experience in research and my, you know, education, EC C, and the great people there, because Karen Huffman, who's with the EC C program, was my actual professor at GCC. And then Alana Brewer was amazing. They pushed me. They saw how I kind of look at things, and they, you know, allowed me to be that way. Actually, at the end of the EC, just show where I've, you know, I've actually done stuff before. We were supposed to give it a rating, a written report. At the end, six of us, they split us into teams of six. And I went out and bought all this stuff to make DSSC solar cells, and I made them all in their lab with a deposition, and they all worked. And it was kind of amazing. And I had joked that the other class should have made an LED so I could light it, you know. So I've always created in my head, and now that I have aI where I can talk it and get my thoughts down on paper and work them out, kind of like a dragon sweater model. That's why, you know, kind of tell people the AI is it gives me choices, and I have to make the choice. And fortunately, my choices seem to be right. And hopefully, within three months, I'll have my business up and running and certain see if I can actually make these things.

Peter Kazarinoff  20:00  
Kevin, that's amazing. You've had quite a journey working in construction and asphalt, going to EC C, doing the lesser program, work in research, and now starting your own company. Huge kudos to you. And thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Kevin  20:16  
Yeah, just everybody needs to know. Man, you you can restart your life at any time you just got to have the right attitude the world's yours to take.

Peter Kazarinoff  20:25  
Well, Kevin, thanks so much for talking with me, and please keep in touch.

Kevin  20:29  
I will. Peter, congratulations - you have a great day.

Peter Kazarinoff  20:38  
Troubleshooting Technicians is produced by the Developing and Using Resources and Strategies to Educate Technicians in Vacuum Technologies project through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program, DUE ATE Number 2400426. Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.