November 2013 Survey

Survey introduction

The November 2013 survey was the tenth survey carried out using a format where individual cleanroom users were asked about their view on various parts of using DTU Danchip's facilities and in particular the cleanroom facilities.
The questionaire was send to 329 registered users (based on the logging of cleanroom use) unfortunately 8 of the e-mail adresses was obsolete and thus the mails bounced, which brought the total number of potential answers to 321 . In total 65 persons answered the questionaire which means an answer fraction of 20% regardless of whether or not the bounces should be included in the total.
This page deals with the comments given as part of the questionaire. Danchip values this feedback highly.

Comments

The comments appear here as they were written in the feedback field of the questionaire. In a few cases they have been anonymized or the worst spelling mistakes corrected.

Comment 1

Sometimes I recognize that there is a lot of load on several Danchip engineers and they can't provide sufficient service in time.

Action: None
Thank you for the comment. Our diverse set of tools gives a wide variety of interesting problems. Quite a few of the problems can only be solved if the engineer has considerable insight into the inner workings of the machines. On top of this the tools do not break down at evenly spaced intervals but break down at the worst moment. That does mean that some times our engineers should preferable be in two places at once, which is of course not possible. We will keep on working with the full palette of: preventive maintenance, back-up processes and improved user training so as to minimize the problems for the users and the load on the engineers, but due to the very nature of the facility, we will never be able to completely avoid it.

Comment 2

The downtime of machines such as the Wordentec and SSE Spinner has been perhaps slightly dissatisfying.

Action:

We fully agree that the long downtime of the SSE spinner was most unfortunate, but we had actually done our very best to prevent it. We knew that the control software was a weak point, since it had reached its present status after several bug fixes performed by visiting service engineers from the company SSE, which now is bankrupt and therefore cannot help. To prevent a long breakdown of the tool we had actually spent considerable time to create a working hard disk image, as the most vulnerable part of a PC is usually its hard disk.
However, when the computer broke down, it was not the hard disk, but a mother board for which we could find no replacement. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to establish a contact to some of the former SSE employees, who could help us re-install a bug fixed version of the software on a modern Windows 7 PC. Had we not been able to find these vital persons, the SSE spinner would most probably still be out of use.

Comment 3

Can the two-photon photopolymerization equipment (i.e. nanoscribe) be placed somewhere where there is minimal people movement? I can see some "wiggling" in my structures due vibrations.

Action:

Comment 4

Sometimes the status "out of use" last quite a long time. It would be really nice if it could be shortened.

Action:

Comment 5

Update on the new SEM? SEM Zeiss is always overbooked

Action:

Comment 6

Would be great to exhange all blue shoes protections from the old model (with buttons) to new (with stripes). Shoes protection model with buttons are a "bit" stressfull :%

Action:

Comment 7

Claus rocks!

Action: Hire Claus to a permanent position
Here sure does rock - that is why he has been hired to a permanent position starting February 1st!

Comment 8

Information to new users on where they can find tools such as tweezers, razors, screwdrivers etc. could be better.

Action:

Comment 9

I would add one more option something between satisfied and unsatisfied. I can't say that I am completely satisfied with availability of equipment and its performance or unsatisfied.

Action: None
It is understandable that some would like to be able to choose an answer in the middle of the spectrum. However it has been a quite deliberate choice for us to not have that option to in a sense 'force' people to choose a bias. We believe this increases the quality of the information we get from the answers.

Comment 10

I think it would be great to have a second simpler e-beam lithography system; a system with less resolution as a back-up and for structures which are not that small.

Action:

Comment 11

Maybe a new SEM Zeiss would be much more helpful for many users.

Action:

Comment 12

I would like the Danchip staff especially the process specialists to have a little more knowledge of the processes, particularly, the so called "standard" processes and more knowledge of the equipments in general.Over the time the standard processes dont remain standard anymore and that can cause a lot of frustration for someone using the process. So the maintenance of such process is really important. I also see lack of resolve in Danchip staff to solve a problem. When it comes to fixing something they try for a quick-fix and if they dont have it you can just keep on waiting for eternity; reflecting their lack of understanding of the issue or the process or the equipment and worse still, lack of resolve to dig deeper and fix it.

Action:

Comment 13

Had a nice start up in the clean room at the safety course and every body is very helpfull

Action: None
Thank you, that is very nice to hear.

Comment 14

The uptime on the e-beam writer has not be satisfactory.

Action: Monitor performance of new JEOL 9500 e-beam writer. Optimise room temperature. Look into purchasing better cassettes.
The new JEOL 9500 e-beam writer is the very first in its generation (serial number 001). Unfortunately, we have had a couple of months where the deflector unit caused several job crashes. However, after numerous JEOL service engineer visits, the e-beam writer apperas to be more stable.
We still have a challenge with stitching of very small structures. This issue is mainly due to a temperature diference of 0.2 degrees C between the mask storage and the inside of the machine. We are adddressing this problem by optimising the temperature uniformity within the e-beam room and by looking into purchasing cassettes with less coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). However, uthe price of one cassette is close to 250 000 DKK.

Comment 15

Some equipment, such as SEM Zeiss, are sometimes not accessible during working hours 8-18, and if you do not plan the booking at least one week in advance, you are obliged to work at night. The new SEM has arrived in summer and has not yet been installed after almost 4 months.

Action:

Comment 16

Performance of equipment: Really not good when litho is not running as it should as all processing is depending on this... Will be very good when new automatic spin track is running well. Cleanroom conditions: Really nice the furnaces got tighter rules to increase cleanliness, however I think all of the contamination rules and especially the spreadsheet should be updated and checked. A clean bonder for clean fusion bonding only in a seperate clean room with few people going around would be nice.

Action:

Comment 17

Waiting time for XPS analysis of about a week is ok, but it would of course always be nice to have it shorter.

Action:

Comment 18

Danchip has been very good at answering my questions and working with me to achieve my results. There are still issues with equipment outage and retirement of old equipment which is less than desirerable.

Action: None - continue optimizing resource allocation, tool decommissioning
Thank you for the positive feedback regarding us helping you, we do try our best.
Regarding decommissioning and tools out of service, they are issues Danchip will continue to work with. Tools do become old and sometimes also become much to expensive to maintain, compared to their usage, even if they are not old, Danchip must then make the unpopular choices so as not to waste too much effort on some tools which might be spent better on getting other tools to run better.

Comment 19

Jeg synes I laver et meget fint stykke arbejde. Ganske få gange ville jeg gerne have en klarer udmelding om hvornår en given opgave bliver udført så jeg kan få tiden til at arbejde for mig, altså få andre ting til at passe ind i den tidsplan som bliver givet til mig.

Action:

Comment 20

The staff is very busy, however it is obvious that they are trying to do their best.

Action: None
Thank you for noticing, we do try our best.

Comment 21

After doing a few projects in the cleanroom, i have found that all Danchip staff will happily answer questions or assist you in whatever you are doing. Because of that, it is always prefered to ask for help, instead of just hoping whatever you are doing is correct, I think this is very important, as you avoid mistakes and dont violate safety without knowing. The equipment and facilities are of course very important, but it is the staff and trainers who make Danchip what it is.

Action: None
Thank you very much for that nice comment. Danchip is the sum of parts, users, staff, tools, facility and University support, and our staff strives to assist users to get the most out of the facility. We are very much here for the user's benefit and welcome questions and feedback.

Comment 22

Right now, everything runs quite smoothly, but there are periods where a lot of machines are down without usable alternatives. It would also be nice to have at least one of the staff reponsible for a certain set of machines (i.e. sputter coaters: lesker, cryofox, Wordentec) available for metal changes/questions/help. Other than that I can't complain. Danchip is an extremely nice working cleanroom ... nice machines, nice environment, nice staff.

Action:

Comment 23

I worked in DTU danchip for 2 weeks in a phd summer school, that was a really nice experience. all the advanced equipment, SOP, we get to know how to work in a cleanroom and the process of fabrication of microchips. all the people around you, they are very nice and helpful.

Action: None
We are glad to hear that your stay was both pleasant and added to your skills.