Research & Development Device Technician

Senior Device Technician
Motorola, Advanced Products Research and Development Laboratory, Austin, Texas

Between 1989 and 2000, I was an Electronic (Device) Technician in the Advanced Research and Development Laboratory at Motorola, in Austin, Texas. I worked first in the Thin Dielectrics Group, for about two years, testing and characterizing dielectrics. Then I moved into the Logic Development Group, where I provided a similar function: characterizing discrete devices, such as transistors, diodes, and simple circuits.

I wrote test programs in HP/Basic, that controlled various analytical equipment and collected results, and I wrote analysis routines in Excel, using both Visual Basic and spreadsheet functions. With some of these analysis routines, I spurred development of new parametric test programs by the Test Floor Engineers, using my Visual Basic routines as models, improving the accuracy of test results, in particular, the measurement of threshold voltage and related parameters.

I am quite familiar with the Device Lab, and the testing and analytical equipment and software, therein, and for several years, I was often called upon to train engineers and other technicians on the use of the Device Lab facilities. I wrote a "user guide" for performing accurate CV measurements that is apparently still in use, today, from what I hear.

My prior experience in APRDL, as an Experimental Assistant for Diffusion/LPCVD, for several years in the wafer fabrication facility, has also made me very familiar with semiconductor manufacturing equipment and processes. After becoming a Device Tech, I was also responsible for maintaining the process flows for the various test vehicles that we used in our experiments.