Semiconductor Technology Translation & Hard-Tech Startups Panel: Access to Foundries & Design Tools

all right well welcome back to the second half of our session um we've heard from three startups each with their own uniqueness and and commonalities as they've launched their journey using shared facilities and these challenges often are observed by those running the the shared facilities and so i want to welcome our panelists who'll help us think through some of the the the questions on how to put together the most useful environments and to help startups and and ideas emerge from the academic environment um as i introduce each panelist we'll we'll take a minute or two to hear their a little bit about their facility and their unique environment and then we'll open it up for questions from the audience um and the discussion so um as before you can type your questions into the chat um at any point in time and we'll pick it up from there um and if the the running over on the previous session is any indication because we had so much fun in this case we'll probably be running until until we get kicked out otherwise we'll be here until 10. um but anyways i'm delighted to introduce uh stundren martin managing director of the university of michigan university of michigan's lurie nano fabrication facility or lnf serendrin received her phd from the university of paris six and joined the center for display technology and manufacturing at the university of michigan in 1996. she has been with nl the lnf since 2004 first as technical manager of the nsf nnin program and then since 2015 as lnf's managing director sandrine thank you and just to add a little bit to that so the university of michigan the very nano fabrication facility is part of the college of engineering we have about uh 450 researchers who use the facility every year roughly two-thirds of them are researchers from the university of michigan but the remaining third are people from outside a few of them and so we have many startup companies that are using the capabilities of the lnf whether it's silicon processing or three-five semiconductors mems lots of different types of research projects and objective is to try to support them as they are kind of growing from the startup phase to becoming more established um and so you know i'll i'll stop here for further introduction uh and i'm sure we'll have more discussions in a few minutes wonderful thank you yeah um it's my pleasure to next introduce uh julia ebersold manager of the micro nanotechnology center at the university of louisville uh julia received her phd in mechanical engineering from the university of louisville in 2005.

her research focused on the development of a strain sensor in biocompatible housing in a biocompatible housing for telemetric strain monitoring after the phd julia worked as a research scientist on federal funded research since 2000 where and since 2012 has been managing the micro nanotechnology center at the university of louisville julia thank you very much for the intro george um likewise comparable to university of michigan we also have a clean room facility and also uh imaging characterization facilities but we are very much geared towards working with external entities in fact we have very much tried very hard to adopt a business mentality where we have very easy easy open access capability to our facilities training [Music] ways that you can you know reserve and equipment and and get as much health as possible and so forth we uh our makeup of our facility is roughly about half and half of external clients but also with uh internal researchers and we have a big cross mix of folks who actually contact us to do services for them we prefer people actually come into our facility and use our facility pardon me because it helps alleviate our resources and but as a result the if you were to look at the panoramic view of our clients and so forth we have clients from all over the country uh including right here in our own backyard and also from other academic institutions as well all right awesome um yeah thank you and our third panelist um john jacoboni is vp of technology strategy at ny creates uh john is an industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience including with amd and global foundries and across silicon valley texas and new york throughout his career he has focused on advanced technology r d including r d alliances and consortia and for the past why create managing programs with major industry partners and most recently focused on technology strategy including federal initiatives such as the nstc john received his undergraduate degree from the university of notre dame and his phd in electric engineering from rensselaer polytechnic institute john yes thank you eric for that introduction uh so as you said i i'm with new york creates we are the not-for-profit entity that runs the albany nanotech facility that you can see behind me i'm not really way up high that's a photo my suny poly colleague nate katie who was a presenter in the prior session talked a lot about how he as a user of that facility uh operates so i won't uh duplicate any of uh what he focused on our primary focus today is our sponsored programs which is are focused on our large industry partners our that we have a manufacturing usa institute which is aimed photonics we also support businesses of any size small medium and large through wafer services access to our facility uh and academic academic support we basically see two types of programs coming to our door knocking on the door and that's at various stages of maturity those are number one true hard tech new materials new structures new devices that need access to capability new process flows and and designs that need access to a common flow whether it's an npw uh or or custom-made custom-made silicon one thing we're very focused on is with these new federal initiatives expanding the model to better support startups small and medium enterprises and it's been very helpful to listen to a lot of the discussions throughout today and looking forward to this discussion now wonderful it's a pleasure to have you all three here um as as managing directors of academic fabrication facilities and vp of technology strategy you obviously have a broad sense of the tools and processes that are enabling uh tech translation but perhaps we'll start off with a question about the challenges um what what are perhaps the challenges that you face in supporting young companies um who are trying to translate you know academic discoveries into viable technologies and we can go in any order we'll just bounce back and forth so i vote sandrine can go first okay i'll i'll jump in then i think um as as startups are you know going through the the growth phase one of their focus is um is optimizing their process right making it more robust starting to address technology issues um looking at ramping up volume uh and and yield on reliability and that means that on the on the facilities side uh obviously we are providing access to the the process the infrastructure that they need first the processing equipment that that they need uh the expertise that they need along the way um but sometimes it's it's managing those needs versus um um some maintaining some of the flexibility that we need for some of the other projects and and uh and helping uh those startup uh researchers and and entrepreneurs uh go through those steps and you know use the appropriate equipment that they need i mean they they don't want to do one sample at a time they need the ability to to run multiple wafers or to run the same process over and over again and managing that while all the other researchers are also doing their work uh sometimes that's that can be uh uh you know prioritizing resources that are available at the facility and that goes back to also what julia was saying in in making sure that um that we are using our resources as appropriately as possible um i i'll i'll add to that as well sometimes startups are also in a pickle of a position where they may have angel investors or they may have types of investors that are saying okay exactly tell us when this product is going to be ready to go to the next step and when you're in it in in particular our facilities are mainly geared towards prototyping okay and finalizing a process so when you're like in our facility or let me back up in a manufacturing facility you've already worked through your process you've got usually dedicated tools you don't change their settings they don't wander very much people are not putting weird materials in them making things get all uh changing things and so forth but in a prototyping facility it's kind of like it's open we do try very hard to control things like contamination and performance of the tools but it can vary a little bit but when you also have a project or a design that you're trying to work out the bugs and somebody's pressuring you saying okay and you're and you're tied to a fixed budget and so forth and things don't go exactly right the very first time or the fifth or the sixth eighth time uh it can be very frustrating and sometimes the companies the startup companies have a hard time um sometimes they can't meet their budget objectives um and sometimes they they may run out of money or they may have to go and ask for additional monies but the one thing that that we always say to our clients is you can't schedule an invention it will happen when the physics and chemistry are ready so john well i just had a a few more comments julia hit on one of the ketones uh and that actually it for for all of our facilities uh it might come down to money um space is precious capital tools uh capital expense is expensive what we find is that startups academic ideas need the ability to change materials have flexible space have flexible tools that any one entity any one company can't afford to buy that and that's why we're optimistic about the federal government providing some of a backstop so that the tools can exist that this month this week user one can use it and then we can change it to something else a different material that's that's still compatible but for for a different user same thing for paying for the masks uh or the or the wafer runs uh sharing that among more users uh spreads the spreads of the cost one other thing i wanted to throw in there as well is that we also we know the startups they're probably their most precious asset is their ip so we also try to make a very conducive and welcoming environment that their ip remains protected as they're working through our facility unless they approach us where they want to be interactive and contributory towards their design parameters and performance from there but we we try very hard to come up with your idea then come to us we'll help you run it through our facility but if you want us to contribute to design then that's when we have to get the university involved as far as ip so i i'd say that's also a concern of mine with the startups as well so the ip remains with the startups unless you do the work for them or the thinking for them well or or we we actually want them to come to our facility and run you know we want to train them and have them come into our facility and run run their product through now logistically that can be a problem especially like if they're in uh north dakota or if they're in new mexico or wherever from there and they can't physically come here because other reasons why clients would come to us is they don't have the they don't have the capital asset to actually run the process they don't want to just serve a production line they don't want to um they don't have the expertise and they want to rely upon us or they're under a time crunch so we may do service work for them as well in fact actually a lot of your users and as well as centurions users and are companies and are they all local or do you deal with a lot of people from out of state or across the country and how what is more how are the challenges there in in communicating with them because they can't come into the fab and look at things when there are problems i imagine zoom is helpful right i think that has helped in a sense i think the past few years have helped facilitate all these discussions uh with people who are not local i think just as julia we also have a lot of users who are coming from who are not from the annabelle or the southeast michigan area and um and for them the flexibility is key um you know the the ideal solution is for them to have enough resources that they can actually come on site and use the equipment themselves and work with our engineers to this way they can handle the wafers handle the designs and and do everything but it's not always possible and sometimes it's lack of personnel in the startup sometimes it's distance um but having um those discussions uh a lot of you know a lot a lot of it happens before the work actually starts whether it's someone who has an idea and how to translate that into into a fabrication facility or into this particular facility even if they have done it somewhere else if they want to translate it into um what it would take at lnf there is always some work that needs to happen and from our end the idea is to try to be as flexible as possible so that if they can come in we'll support them this way if they cannot come in and they just want to sunway first and we're going to have our engineers do it as as a service work or sometimes they cannot come in but they don't want to send the wafers on the design because of confidentiality and and definitely um concerns uh then one thing that has grown over the past several years uh um at least in in this area are contractors these are third-party engineer scientists whose business is whose business it is to actually provide fabrication services and they would do the interface with the startup and provide advice and and you know and get more involved on the iep side um and help to get them uh the the fabrication process that they need and then they are the ones that are working in the lnf or sometimes it goes through u of m faculty members that are also going to collaborate and and do that interface so the idea is that there is all these different paths and every startup is different and what they need well what the needs are different to them right actually a question from from the audience was um are your facilities engaged in formal programs of workforce development and and what areas of the workforce do you focus on i'll start with that absolutely and the workforce development spans a wide wide range connected to the university system bachelor's degrees master's degrees phd students is a key stem degrees is a key part of the pi uh of the pipeline but there's a several other key aspects in the semiconductor industry and that is the operators technicians the the people behind the scenes running the facilities so the the local networks that i think each of us have with our community colleges with our trades programs to build up that side of the workforce development is just just as important the university university programs absolutely internships um those are those are key uh the ability to uh have hands-on students hands-on tweaking tools tweaking processes uh in a controlled manner so they're not uh disrupting the line it is important as well i i would add to that as well as we we definitely have uh like for the city of louisville we definitely have representatives not just for workforce development but also for reaching out to um businesses that are locally uh residing here already and seeing we have a good fit between our facility and those businesses uh also when the city of louisville is courting in new businesses to come here and discussing you know tiffs and locations and all those kinds of things they're also making them aware of what capabilities we have but then in turn they're also telling us like what kind of workforce that they need we have currently right now in in our in our area a large ford battery plant is going to be built here in the next few years and then just down the road up in ohio is a 20 billion dollar intel semiconductor plant that's being built that plant alone wants 3 000 new engineers so we we are in the process of maneuvering ourselves to start you know start those discussions with those companies saying what specifically do you need and then we will start to develop curricula that will uh cater to those needs so that we can start developing an educated workforce to go directly into those facilities and i think that's that's really important because as part of obviously the startups are driven by the engineers the scientists the entrepreneurs but as they are starting to to grow and they need to scale up they need to not invent a new process or a new technology but they need to make it better make it more robust and and you need to run wafers or run samples to do that and um that's where what we hear from a lot of the startups that that work in the lnf is that they need um they need more people they need people that are that have some experience working in in a clean room and can run establish processes and and you know tweak things and optimize but not create it from scratch um one thing that that we've done over the years and that has worked um is having um students participate it's either internships or program with the university where they are not doing research in the lab but they are part of the staff team so they help with uh some of the standard tasks with maybe basic characterization of equipment and and things like this and that gives them experience working in a clean room that gives them some experience working on the tools and we've had a number of them then kind of move on and get hired by some of the startups or young companies that are using the lnf and and just help them in that growth process um but that's something that that you know definitely i could see uh scaling more of it in in southeast michigan we have keller that recently um set up their second headquarter here and that's also a place that is hiring a lot of engineers and people with that kind of experience so yeah there is a need and actually expanding on on that perhaps on the workforce in an academic setting teaching classes on fab and and how to use the fab and characterization and so on on these kind of tools is very expensive because the tools are expensive and you know labs are expensive is that shifting academic programs away from using the fabs for students and for student training do you worry about that one thing that i can tell you is that in in our facility what happens is that there is a lab that is subsidized partially by the department and then there's a lab fee that the students pay and what we're seeing is that more of that lab fee is being pushed more towards a student which is which is kind of a shame you know i'm you know because budgets only go so far but you know when you start to increase those lab fees you're going to see students not wanting to take those classes because they're so expensive so i'm hoping we can balance that out but yeah yeah i mean those classes are there are classes in the um at the university here two of them that are run in the in the clean room uh those are in electrical engineering classes typically and definitely the cost is a challenge and you know trying to optimize things uh there's it's obviously subsidized but still it can it can make the the process expensive and um and kind of encouraging more students um to to take the course and and enroll is also an important element because like with as with many things if you have more students the the cost can be lower another aspect of students using facilities is not just the hands-on but there's a large distributed network of students who could be working on design and having their the ability that their designs can run in any one of our facilities is another key component it's it's part of the model of the fabulous industry where you may not actually be touching the silicon but you've got the design idea and seeing that become real uh is also part of the education process and i think that if if when students actually experience the those lab sessions where they actually put on the bunny suit and gun up and go inside the lab and handle away first uh maybe in their future carrier they are not going to handle wafers with tweezers etc but it still gives them some understanding of how fabrication works in in general and even if later they are going into a more design role um i think that it's that experience of fabrication is actually going to be very very beneficial for them yeah actually at many universities um perhaps not so much at suny albany tools where a lot of tools were donated from industry in the 90s in the in the six to eight inch conversion and so the question is you know the donated tools can we train the workforce of the 21st century with the the tools of the 1980s that's a good question just the just in lithography it's it's a whole different realm um i mean especially when you can try and compare semiconductors in them it's it's it's not even technology it's it's it's apples to oranges as far as the type of processes and so yeah the the the types of instruments that we have right now um are that that is a challenge because i will tell you uh yes the the industrial donations are out there but a lot of times there's sometimes there's a not a good fit when in taking industrial donations they're either too big they're meant to handle you know 25 wafers at a shot you know when we just want to process one at a time uh or the utilities the quantities that you have to run through the the equipment are not suitable for for a facility like ours so yeah that that's a direct uh that's a really good question like i said especially in the the lithography the patterning area uh in that aspect and that's a challenge because um i mean getting kind of a generation the next generation right the more recent tools are often are or tools that let's say are gonna handle 200 millimeter wafers or things like that these are not easily sustainable for an academic facility uh the the um you know the operating costs are going to be higher the footprint is higher the chemical usage is higher and and it's not needed typically or not required by the local academic community so um but yet it can be something where um i know that we try to balance things between maybe some more manual tools a single wafer at the time and things like that and some tools that are going to provide a little more automation or volume but we can't have two fabs uh that are in in the same space and so for the startups again going looking at you know kind of the path and the growth um at some point they they need more they're gonna need things that are beyond what what an academic facility can provide and so that's you know having a path forward where okay you've grown out of this uh you can run these kind of prototypes and and small volumes and now where do you go for the next step yeah in fact actually from from my perspective at mit nano we have um equipment that is is up to eight inch capable it's not going to be automated equipment at the same time you can run you know your three millimeter diamond piece all the way up to your eight inch wafer um and the way sometimes i i view this as you know the the industry um route is really this this big highway right where you have lots of fast cars you can go very efficiently and and in an academic setting you're you're exploring what's off road to the left and the right from the highway and and sometimes you don't necessarily need a race car to do that you you know you can sometimes do just as well with a with an old truck um a new truck is certainly also good um but that's sort of my my analogy um perhaps one one final thought here um what question that was was asked from the audience what's missing in your facilities today money and time yeah because right resources i think that's often what it comes down to is that um you know whether it's it's space to install new tools money to buy new tools that are going to provide more kind of a broader portfolio to our users and and resources staff these that's where a lot of the expertise is and that expertise is key for the startups to grow to go through that increasing volume making the process robust uh developing that they need uh they need those interactions with their engineers and our scientists and and getting their experience whether it's to set up new tools or to improve the process and and that's what you know i wish we could double the size of our staff and and we would provide a much better service to all our startups i agree yeah we the thing that uh one of the big primary things that we run into is that we we have lots of capability we have a large fleet of equipment but it's aging and it needs to be replaced and um the the the most of the models that the academic clean rooms run on is is kind of a non-profit so to speak but when you have to replace so you are you're basically maintaining a budget and staff and resources to to keep your facility running but you're not you know you're not allowed to make like a huge amount of money you you are you are able to maintain some so you can replace some things and so forth but when you're looking at replacing several you know lots of large pieces of equipment that are multi-millions of dollars most of us are not prepared to go in that route you know and we do get a lot of help from our institutions to go after those but you can't you know you can't keep going back once every six months and say okay now i need a new lp cbd system now i need a new e-beam system now i need you know we need to increase this capability or we need to add this you know add this technology and it's it's so that that that's probably our our biggest uh issue right now is our aging equipment and replacement of that let me take a slightly different angle of this i i agree with everything my colleague said there but let me take a little bit different angle and that is the trend in the industry over the last 20 years has been uh consolidation and bring bring things in-house and i i think there's an opportunity going forward for a meeting of many different minds in an organization uh that whether it's a consortium or whatever you want to whatever you want to call it like the federal government is envisioning where background ideas and expertise from many different sources come together and then can be shared among academic users leverage among academic users or startups while at the same time those larger industry players also benefit um by driving maybe pre-competitive uh pre-competitive r d and uh that shared pre-competitive environment is um has shrunk has uh has gotten smaller over the last decades as stuff's come internal uh one thing i will say sorry uh is that the within one one really good thing about the academic environment though is that we're tightly networked and we have databases of awareness saying who's got what and so like if if i have a tool and my tool goes down then hey i can call it sandrine and say sandrine run this six inch wafer through your drie and she'd be like sure no problem you know and do it for me and send me an invoice you know so and and it works out well so it's uh we we do have some um the it's we do have a nice network of shared capabilities i think probably one of the problems we have is getting the word out of what we can do a little bit better though well a little bit behind time but thank you so much for for stopping by here and giving us all these insights like i said we probably could go until 10 o'clock um we only have until five so thank you for coming and thank you for sharing your your wisdoms and i'm sure the audience appreciates it and i certainly do thank you so much you

2022-03-11 06:53

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