Digital image correlation metrology technology
Category Archives: Metrology
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March 30, 2004 — Put yourself in Polychromix’s shoes. You endured the telecom shakeout. You raised some venture money. You recently rolled out a product and have some orders. It would appear to be time to set up offshore manufacturing.
Instead, the 25-person optical equipment startup is expected to unveil a new manufacturing facility in Wilmington, Mass., today to make its P-DCO, or dynamic channel orchestrator. And to staff the 24,000-square-foot space, the company intends to hire about 15 new people this year, mostly engineers and technicians.
So much for outsourcing.
Polychromix executives say the choice was motivated by concerns over cost and quality. Outsourcing manufacturing introduces complexities and risks — not the least of which include overcoming language barriers and reconstituting production lines using specialized equipment — which they did not want to undertake.
“It’s a less risky activity for us to build them locally,” said Mouli Ramani, vice president of business development and marketing.
But they say biggest hurdle is actually transferring a production process to another manufacturer. “There is an amount of inherited knowledge that is very difficult to transfer,” Ramani said. “No matter where we would transfer it to, there would be risks in the transfer itself.”
In short, the executives say, they have confidence in their product process but not in their ability to transfer it to another manufacturer. Process transfer is especially important given the complexity of the dynamic channel orchestrator. The device separates and recombines the wavelengths of light and is used to reconfigure optical networks “on the fly” for both long haul and metro networks.
MEMS consultant Bill Trimmer said Polychromix’s technology is, to some extent, an expression of the design philosophy of its founder, chairman and chief technology officer — MIT professor Stephen Senturia.
“He pushed the entire industry to be able to flexibly measure stuff,” Trimmer said. “And that’s what his product is. In a lot of ways it’s the evolution of what he’s been talking about. It’s a metrology tool (for measuring light.)”
It is also time-intensive to manufacture. The orchestrators require painstaking alignment and intermittent wait times for various components to set. Polychromix expects to initially crank out one device per week from its four production lines and to ramp up to two devices per week later in the year. “We could build them faster if we wanted,” Ramani said, “We’ve chosen to be very deliberative about how we do each cycle.”
Company executives also said that doing early manufacturing at home gives them the ability to try new things. For example, when customers request tweaks, “You can have the same people on the manufacturing line doing the ‘what-if’ scenarios.”
As costs come down and volumes go up, executives say, the company is likely to revisit the question of outsourcing production. But that probably wouldn’t happen before 2006.
March 2, 2004 — The day after Hewlett-Packard’s “n is for nanotechnology” television commercial ran during the U.S. Open tennis tournament in September 2003, Fred Filler’s phone started ringing.
The marketing manager with book publisher Wiley & Sons Inc., had long been telling colleagues that nanotechnology was a subject they’d be hearing more about. Today, Wiley is one of several publishers with a growing focus on small tech titles.
In February, science publisher Springer-Verlag released the “Springer Handbook of Nanotechnology,” a mammoth 1,222-page tome surveying everything from basic concepts to current research and detailed data on materials. The publisher’s new Web site also has a subsection devoted to microtechnology and nanotechnology titles.
While publishers of technical, scientific and academic books have (like the researchers who write them) been putting out work related to the nanoscale for decades, today’s commercial buzz over nano hasn’t gone unnoticed in the book world.
Bernard Goodwin, publisher of Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, which released Mark and Daniel Ratner’s “Nanotechnology and Homeland Security: New Weapons for New Wars” in November 2003, anticipates a growing demand for information about nanotechnology among nonscientists and business people.
“Our strategy is to publish nanotechnology science and engineering textbooks for the emerging college course market and reference books for the practicing engineer across a variety of industries, as well as continuing to publish the non-technical book for the broad-based market,” Goodwin wrote via e-mail.
“Nanotechnology is so fresh and new and full of promise that we are open to all ideas for books from prospective authors that share our excitement and believe in the potential benefits of nanotechnology.”
Filler explained that with so much research money flowing toward nanotechnology, book publishers like Wiley are following the funding. Research dollars result in academic papers that naturally evolve into technical titles, handbooks and collected papers.
The field is especially attractive, he noted, for a publisher like Wiley that has already published a range of nanotech titles and covers a wide range of scientific subjects in books and journals, A recent release, David Goodsell’s new “Bionanotechnology: Lessons from Nature,” is a good example of where the cross-fertilization of nanotechnology is spawning new areas of expertise.
Other new offerings include an English translation of “Nanotechnology: An Introduction to Nanostructuring Techniques,” by Michael Köhler and Wolfgang Fritzsche, from the original German.
While one of Wiley’s first nanotech titles was “Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation,” K. Eric Drexler’s 1992 follow-up to “Engines of Creation,” Filler reports that as the broader public’s growing interest has driven popularity of more general audience books such as “Introduction to Nanotechnology,” by Charles P. Poole, Jr. and Frank J. Owens, published in 2003, or business titles such as Glenn Fishbine’s “The Investor’s Guide to Nanotechnology & Micromachines,” in 2001.
Over the course of the next year Wiley has 29 nanotech titles slated for publication on subjects such as biochips, the nano/micro interface and a handbook on nanotech business, policy and intellectual property.
To map out a plan to meet the expected growth in demand for nanotech titles, Wiley marketing colleagues from the United Kingdom, Germany and Asia got together last summer to compile lists of university research centers and companies focused on nanotech, as well as some of the leading authorities who might be approached to edit or write a book.
The group also identified where it might advertise its nanotech initiative, in journals such as Elsevier Publishing’s Materials Today, or Wiley’s own Advanced Materials. Another facet of the plan entailed a direct marketing mailing in Europe and the United States. One challenge a direct marketing effort poses is that a “nanotech audience” is difficult to clearly define when the field cuts across so many scientific disciplines and industries.
World Scientific Publishing Co., with headquarters in Singapore and offices throughout Asia and the world, is another book-and-journal company with a dedicated list of nanotechnology titles. Two recent best-sellers are “Molecular Electronics: Commercial Insights, Chemistry, Devices, Architecture and Programming,” by James Tour, a nanotech researcher at Rice University in Houston and co-founder of Molecular Electronics Corp., and “Nano-Engineering in Science and Technology: An Introduction to the World of Nano-Design,” by Michael Rieth.
While the nanotech slice of the professional and scholarly books market is a very small part of what the American Association of Publishers gauged was, in the United States alone, a $5 billion business in 2002, Wiley’s Filler sees three areas of growth. The first is for books aimed at engineers in specific industries looking to apply nanoscience to commercial processes. The second is for titles on metrology and measuring techniques to help nanotechnologists characterize what they can fabricate. Filler expects the third to look at the ongoing debate about the risks and rewards of nanotechnology.
February 17, 2004 – Nanometrics Inc., Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to integrate its NanoOCD/DUV 9101b film thickness mapping module into Lam’s CMP tool, removing the need to move wafers to a standalone metrology tool. Lam has qualified the module for monitoring dielectric film thickness, erosion, and copper residue.
Feb. 6, 2004 — Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO, News, Web), a Woodbury, N.Y., manufacturer of metrology tools for nanoscale applications in the semiconductor, data storage, telecommunications and research markets, announced a fourth-quarter loss of $4.8 million, or 16 cents per share, versus a $116.5 million loss, or $4 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2002.
The company posted fourth-quarter revenues of $76.9 million, versus $68.6 million in the year-earlier period.
Veeco executives credited the fourth-quarter performance to a number of factors, including increased revenue in three out of four of the company’s core markets as well as the effect of cost-reduction initiatives.
For the year as a whole, Veeco posted a loss of $9.7 million, or 33 cents per share, versus a $123.7 million loss in 2002.
“(There was) clearly a broad industry market improvement which was quite dramatic in the fourth quarter,” said Ed Braun, chairman and chief executive, in a conference call this morning. “We appear to be at the start of a sustainable recovery cycle.”
Braun said the company forecasts first quarter revenues will be up approximately 10 percent.
JAN.23–MINNEAPOLIS–August Technology Corp., a supplier of inspection and metrology solutions for the microelectronic industries, announced the expansion of their Taiwan operations in Hsinchu to better serve the growing number of customers in this region.
This expanded facility will provide August Technology’s customer base in Taiwan with local customer training and support services as well as demonstration facilities all in a central location.
“Taiwan continues to be one of our most strategically important regions as it is home to some of the world’s most prominent chip making companies, as well as being a gateway to China. Historically, August Technology has been very successful in this region, in fact, nearly 40% of our 2003 revenues came from customers based in Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China,” says Jeff O’Dell, CEO of August Technology. “We have made this investment in our local Taiwan infrastructure to ensure we are providing world-class service to our existing customers, in addition to our anticipation of increased activity in this area.”
The newly expanded center features cleanrooms for local applications studies and provides for additional training of tool operators and engineers in their home region.
“The expansion also enables us to more quickly respond to and resolve system issues by reducing travel time with local spare parts and additional service engineers,” says Roger Lao, general manager of August Technology Taiwan. “These resources, which include Mandarin-speaking support personnel, are critical to providing our customers with around the clock support .”
January 21, 2004 – Nanometrics, Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to supply metrology units to be integrated into Tokyo-based Hitachi High-Technologies’ (HHT) semiconductor inspection products. Nanometrics will also help with support for HHT’s customers using the integrated products.
January 21, 2004 – August Technology, Bloomington, MN, a provider of automated inspection and metrology equipment, is expanding its service and applications operations in Hsinchu, Taiwan to consolidate customer training and support services as well as demonstration facilities into a central location. Nearly 40% of the company’s revenues come from Taiwan and China, according to CEO Jeff O’Dell.
January 15, 2004 – Nanometrics Inc., Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to supply integrated metrology units to Japan’s Ebara Corp. for use with its CMP products. Nanometrics will also help with support for Ebara customers using the integrated products.
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Jan. 9, 2004 — It has become increasingly clear that the foundations for economic growth in modern societies rest in the talent and education of its people and in the technology embedded in its manufacturing and services sectors. Lately, concerns have arisen in the United States that growth can only be sustained if innovative models of education are more widely adopted.
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Economic growth relies on the continued accumulation of knowledge. This knowledge breathes new life into age-old raw materials and turns them into stronger medicines, faster computers, cleaner environments. It is embedded in the tools and equipment that are used to produce the world’s goods and services. It has grown dramatically in the last 50 years. Today, nanotechnology offers the greatest promise for expanding the knowledge frontier at an even faster pace.
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We have enjoyed many gains through increasingly sophisticated technologies: the creation of more productive equipment, a more educated work force, and a standard of living that doubled since World War II. As the sophistication of the technology has grown, so too have the demands on the educational system. Students must be trained with the best tools and by the leading thinkers in that technology’s development.
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This is especially true in the area of nanotechnology, where state-of-the-art lab equipment is needed to make and image new materials and to understand novel processes. This requires universities and colleges to undergo costly upgrades and to fight for the brightest minds.
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A university engaged in nanoscale research will have a suite of metrology tools, including atomic force and scanning electron microscopes (AFMs and SEMs). Price tags for these: about $250,000 for the AFM and $1.2 million for a high-end SEM. This is quite a jump from the cost of an optical microscope at the end of WWII.
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The increasing depth and variety of jobs in the private sector also have conspired to push up the costs of a high-tech education. Since wages in high-tech professions have risen relative to the average U.S. salary, the increase in industry opportunities for scientists means that universities must offer more lucrative contracts to retain a leading-edge faculty.
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While universities bear the costs, the nation as a whole benefits. There are signs that government and industry recognize this imbalance and are willing to collaborate to create an educational system that meets nanotechnology’s challenges.
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Knowledge carries an extra reward to society because it can be used repeatedly at zero marginal cost. While some knowledge is retained within a single firm through patents and trade secrets, much of new technology streams into the public domain. This spillover of knowledge leads others to create new and better products that do not provide direct reward to the original innovator.
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Of course, when allocating spending to R&D, firms look only at the additional profits that this R&D is likely to create for them. They ignore the further benefits to society from the subsequent discoveries that occur outside the firm. As a result, firms will always underinvest in R&D from the public’s perspective.
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This provides a distinct role for government: improve incentives for firms to pursue R&D to push economic growth up to its efficient level. Government is able to act on behalf of national interests since it can spread the modest costs of such programs across a large number of households, and nudge up the growth rate to generate a more rapidly rising standard of living.
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By the same logic, a strong argument can be made for industry organizations to support scientific education and R&D. When the entire industry needs a particular skill set, it becomes worthwhile to support focused educational programs and to encourage more young people to pursue these degrees. No one firm, on its own, would choose to do this, since it would not be sure to receive the benefits — and indeed, it may only be helping its rival to acquire better employees! This free-rider problem demands industrywide cooperation in providing support for education and work force training.
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This calls for a new model for collaboration among government, universities, and industry, and one that involves industry more directly in the process of education. The federal government recognizes the inherent spillovers in new discoveries and has been increasing funding of nanoscale research and technology development. State governments are competing to attract high-tech R&D activities and this means building upon research universities. And industry is becoming more heavily involved at educational institutions. These are signs that the U.S. educational system is evolving to meet these new challenges.
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A case in point is the new School of Nanosciences and Nanoengineering (SNN) at the University at Albany — State University of New York. The first school devoted to the nanosciences, it is paired with Albany NanoTech, the R&D and technology deployment institute at U Albany. It also benefited from the leadership and commitment of Gov. George E. Pataki through the state’s Center of Excellence program, and from industry partners such as IBM.
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The combined assets of Albany NanoTech and the SNN offer graduate students opportunities for integrating classroom knowledge into the process of technology development. Industry benefits from the collaboration and a better-prepared work force, and government gains a valuable mechanism for driving economic growth.