UVM has started a Semiconductor program and has been designated a Tech Hub. Very blessed to be a part of this program and working with a great team. Also working with another great team on Hybrid Energy Systems. Looking at the best way to combine solar, batteries, inverters and hydrogen generators. Bringing some real science to the field of alternative energy systems.

Maintain Applied Materials Producer CVD tools along with Novellus Speed and Vector CVD. Applied Materials certified in Producer maintenance, and FTEOS. (flowable). Novellus (Lam) certified in Speed maintenance. Team lead as needed.

Then 1993 came and IBM had the first mass layoffs in company history. I accepted a job as a maintenance technician in the Burlington wafer fab. I worked on the Applied Materials P5000 platform. Served as team lead for many years. A couple of the achievements I encouraged the area to adopt were installation of the WPS sensors. This reduced wafer breakage in the storage elevators. I started a program to “kit” wet strip kits. Before I arrived technicians ordered every part individually, I put together a program to have everything in one box with one part number. Saved millions over time. I developed a method to reduce DC bias in PSG deposition. I became an expert at trouble shooting equipment and process problems, contributing equipment upgrade ideas and bringing processes back into specification and improving up-time. Applied Materials certified in P5000 maintenance, CVD and Etch Processes and Contamination Control. I retired from IBM in 2011.

I joined the “Advanced Packaging Lab” in E. Fishkill in the fall of 1987. I was an “Equipment Engineering Technician”. We made the “first level package” for chips. I wound up working on just about every piece of equipment we had. Ulvac copper sputter, Dectacs, Tencors, Convacs, PC control systems. Thin film wiring with polyimide films and copper wiring. Much harder than making wafers, as we had to yield the whole brick. No bad dies to dice out. One of my projects was substrate cleaning prior to pad deposition. I earned an “OTA”, outstanding technical achievement award for independent work on ion beam milling. This technology was later incorporated into new sputtering systems, (Pfeiffer), for copper deposition for the substrates. Part of this work was to travel to Germany for acceptance testing. I was also selected for a special team to expedite parts and technology for the SSI project. Steve Chen's company, Supercomputer Systems Inc. When new equipment purchases slowed down, I moved over to process engineering where I finished out my tenure in the Hudson Valley.

I started for IBM in 1979 at the Watson Labs, in Yorktown Heights, NY as a model maker, a machinist in the model shop. I was fortunate to get a co-op position there while attending Westchester Community College in the Machinist Training Program. I stayed in touch with them and was hired as regular employee in May of 1979. While working in the shop I was privileged to work with many engineers and scientists to build many different devices for their work. I built things from raw materials. Devices, such as analytical vacuum systems, to experimental scanning tunneling microscopes. I also ran the specialty joining area where I joined different types of materials with techniques from simple soldering, to brazing, to TIG welding, hydrogen furnace brazing and electron beam welding. One of the coolest projects I worked on was to hydrogen furnace braze a stainless steel vacuum assembly, which was an x-ray shutter. I then traveled to the Brookhaven National Labs and installed it on the x-ray beam line there. I also fabricated gold wire gaskets for ultra-high vacuum analytical devices. Here is where I learned vacuum and He leak detection. Working there was one of the best experiences of my life.About 1984 or so I took a transfer to the “Manufacturing Research Center”, within the Watson Labs as a laboratory assistant. There we worked on new ways to join chips to substrates. Without flux, in reducing atmospheres. New ways to join chip packages to circuit cards. While there I learned how to operate a scanning electron microscope. Co-authored a couple of disclosures. Was promoted to “23” level, the highest technician level in IBM. From there I moved on to E. Fishkill.