Lam Research Corporation, a Fremont, California, company that is the leading supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the global semiconductor industry, has recognized NPRE graduate student Jason Peck with an Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
The honor recognizes Peck’s work with plasma etching and PECVD of thin films. Peck is exploring the effects of introducing laser exposure to the plasma etching process, and has been able to activate etching in gas chemistries that normally do not etch, and enhance etch rates in recipes that do. He and his colleagues have studied standard materials of Si and SiO2, and have explored other material candidates with which the laser-enhanced etching would perform well, particularly metals.