This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.
The work will entail:
In semiconductor manufacturing and metrology, optical techniques are often utilized to assess the
quality of wafers or epitaxially grown layers because local material defects or contamination are
detrimental to device performance. Increasingly, these optical techniques are based on hyperspectral
imaging principles where every pixel of an image contains both the spatial and the spectral information
corresponding to photons arriving from a part of the chip. One very popular optical imaging method is
photoluminescence (PL) imaging where an area of the material is optically excited by a laser, or an LED
and the emitted luminescence photons are intercepted via a detector such as a spectrometer or a
filtered camera.
This research is focused on the development of a standard reference light source that can be used to
calibrate any wide field or scanning imaging system such that every pixel of an image is calibrated to
show the actual photon flux leaving the surface of the semiconductor material or the chip. Furthermore,
this reference light source will produce spectral photon flux maps so that hyperspectral images at
various emitted photon energies are calibrated in an absolute way. We will work on a process to ensure
that the measured defect emission spectra are properly scaled by a NIST calibration specimen such that
one can make a meaningful comparison between different optically detected defects measured on
readily available commercial devices. Furthermore, the radiative efficiency of the material will be
determined, which will directly correlate with the material quality and allows the manufacturer to reject
high-impurity, defective wafers during inline monitoring.
Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:
- Perform uniformity mapping of standard light sources using programmable translational scanning stages.
- Perform angular measurements of light leaving various light sources using an in-house programmable robotic arm.
- Calculate a spectral calibration factor and develop a mathematical approach to apply it to every pixel of a hyperspectral luminescence image.
- Test the developed calibration factor on a few semiconductor wafers such as on GaAs or GaN chips.
- Develop an uncertainty budget for the measurement and analysis protocol.
Qualifications:
- Ph. D. degree in Physics, Computer Science, Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
- 2 years of relevant experience, including graduate research work.
- Familiarity with data analysis techniques and mathematical computations using programming tools such as Mathematica, Python or MATLAB.
- A strong desire to collaborate with other researchers and be involved on various related projects.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
Please upload the following (preferably in a single PDF) with your application:
- CV/Resume
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Purpose: The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) which is designed to provide valuable laboratory experience and financial assistance to undergraduates, post-bachelor’s degree holders, graduate students, master’s degree holders, postdocs, and faculty.
PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate administrative functions of the PREP Program.
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