News Archive

On April 25, about 40 people, including representatives from five different companies, toured Professor David Ruzic’s laboratory during an Open House at the Center for Plasma Material Interactions in the Nuclear Radiation Laboratory on the Illinois campus.

Those touring the lab--where Ruzic and his group develop machines to make silicon chips for micro electronics among other plasma-related research--included faculty from across the College of Engineering as well as students, staff members, and industry sponsors. Ruzic gave a talk, and he and his students and post-doctoral research associates demonstrated the machines and explained ongoing research through several posters.

The Open House was intended, Ruzic said, to encourage companies to sponsor plasma research or join the new National Science Foundation Center for Plasma-Aided Manufacturing. Ruzic heads that group along with scientists from the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Organizations currently sponsoring Ruzic’s Center for Plasma-Material Interactions research include ASML, Cymer, Energetiq, Intel, Micron, Kurt J. Lesker Co., Novellus, Sematech, Semiconductor Research Corp., Starfire Industries, the U.S. Department of Energy, Ushio, Xtreme Technologies, General Electric, PPPL, the U.S. Department of the Air Force, and the National Science Foundation.

NPRE graduate students Liang Meng and Ramasamy Raju work with the equipment in the Center for Plasma Material Interactions.

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"There's more work and more opportunity then is reasonable to expect to be done under one professor's guidance," Ruzic maintained. He said several assistant professors from Electrical and Computer Engineering appeared interested in doing projects with the Center.

Ruzic said much credit for the Open House's success goes to postdoc Martin J. Neumann. "Without Marty, the Open House would never have taken place. He did it extremely professionally," Ruzic said.

Contact: Susan K. Mumm, editor/alumni affairs coordinator, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, 217/347-2166.