November 2011 Survey

Survey introduction

The November 2011 survey was the sixth 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 212 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 204 . In total 57 persons answered the questionaire which means an answer fraction of 28% 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

When using the training email, I have at some occasions needed to send an extra email after a week before I got an answer.

Action: Auto reply functionality added + continously improving planning
We have unfortunately seen some cases as described above. We are continously improving our planning approach so we can give useful answers faster, we are not quite where we want to be yet.

Comment 2

Det ville være rart hvis track 1 kom til at virke igen. Jeg har også savnet et kort over rentrummet, så ikke Danchip mennesker også har en chance for at finde ud af hvor rentrum 1 og 5 er, og lige ledes hvad de forskellige service rum kaldes officielt. Dette vil lette kommunikationen mellem brugerne og Danchip.

Action:
Vedr. kort i renrummet: dette er et ønske fra mange af vores kunder og vi er derfor gået i gang med et større projekt omkring navngivning af de forskellige sektioner i renrummet. De gamle navne bærer præg af at renrummet er bygget over flere omgange og er ikke tidssvarende længere. De nye navne vil indeholde en kode der entydigt fortæller hvor i renrummet det er og sandsynligvis også et ”populær-navn”. Men da de gamle navne er en del af labmanger og andre dokumentationssystemer er det desværre ikke nogen helt simpel opgave.

Comment 3

I think we should introduce the cleanroom face masks and bouffant caps. The masks are very important; I have seen many people who are talking with eachother while looking at their samples. The amount of spit that comes out when one talks is significant. Also, it might be a good idea to introduce personal acid gloves for everyone. In this way, one is 100% sure what the gloves have been used for and how clean they are. I also think that as a welcome, every new person should get his own tweezers.

Action:
Acid gloves: In principle it would be nice to have personal acid gloves. We have, however, more than 200 users and it would be far to messy -especially in a cleanroom - to have that many personal items "floating" around. We are striking hard to keep down the mess in general in the cleanroom and this would be a step in the wrong direction.

Comment 4

Men should wear face masks if they have beards.

Action: No action
Cleanliness would improve if the suggestion was followed. At the moment Danchip has no plans to make face masks mandatory. The added hassle for users as well as the effort required to establish this has meant that Danchip has decided not to introduce this.

Comment 5

Hope to receive a more timely response for the new staff brought by the new project.

Action: No action
It is not entirely clear what this comment is about, but it seems to be a comment regarding response time. We have had some cases of answering taking too long, on the other hand most of the Danchip staff spends the day away from the office limiting the amount of time spend in front of the office computer - this is how it should be, we should be helping customers, getting tools back online or improve processes.

Comment 6

When equipment is "out of use" it is highly desirable to have the expected ready date listed eventhough it is not for sure it is ready there. We do not always get a reply to a email when we write directly to a person. This can of cause be due to the personal is too busy in general, but it is just very clumbersome to go finde the person all the time to be able to communicate. The facility is very well run i general and the present close interaction between customer and staff make the everyday work much more effecient.

Action:
Thanks for the comment. We agree completely regarding the expected ready date and we strive to improve our performance here. Very often we are waiting for external services/components and this can make the time estimation difficult. However, we will still like to improve our information level here. Regarding the communication, please use the specific machine email group if the question/problem is related to a specific machine. If the question/problem is very urgent then try to contact one of the persons under "Contact info" directly.

Comment 7

I have had a few occurances where the time for answering about a machine or training has taken several days, but usually this is not the case.

Action: No action
A few days of response time is to be expected. You should expect even longer if the subject of the mail is more complex.

Comment 8

A lot of equipment availability issues are out of DANCHIP's hands, but this can nevertheless still be frustrating to have long turnover times with high end machines. To everyday users, availability of existing processes feels like a more immediate priority than installing new ones.

Action:
We strive to be as independent as possible of external services on the machines - service contracts are extremely expensive and without a contract the service level is generally poor. For the time being though there are some exceptions: All the new machines (3xICP, Cryofox, IBE, 2-Photon-Polymer, LPCVD-Poly(6")) are still under warranty and therefore still under the vendors responsibility (we are not allowed to do any repairs!). The E-Beam-Writer is way to complex for us to repair - here we rely completely on JEOL. Same comment regarding the e-columns on the SEM's - here we have to rely on the service from the companies. Beside these exceptions we believe that it is fair to say that we have built up in-house expertise on most equipments and this is reflected in a general low down-time. There will always be exceptions e.g. when we are waiting for spare parts.

Comment 9

I'm generally very happy working in the cleanroom, however on multiple occasions I've arrived at equipment left in unacceptable states, e.g. wet benches, open plasma asher, dirty towels used for chemical spillage. Especially the fume hoods seem by some users to be regarded as a place where everything goes which is not the case. E.g. often a single wafer is place in petri dishes in the fumehood benches and left with no name or information on what is going on, this is very annoying for the next user as this person have accommodate some unknown (potentially dangerous) process. In this regard you might consider a specified fumehood station for petri dish processing, where samples can be left alone (still marked with proper names of course) hence these type processes will not clutter up the residual fumehood benches, which then is considered reserved for more dynamic processing needs. The main thing to improve an maintain the high cleanroom standard is to keep enforcing the strict guidelines of proper cleanroom behavior and you educational aspects such the safety course etc.

Action:
Compared to the dedicated chemical benches there is a considerable amount of freedom in processing in the fume hoods. However, this freedom is not unlimited. According to our 'Rules for working in the cleanroom' which can be seen in LabManager under 'General Info' (among other things) users must always write their name, date and the contents on the beaker in the fumehood.

We examine continously the need for new and better equipment, and the suggested petri dish fume hood could be an idea in the future. Petri dish processing is important with our commitment to e-beam lithography. However, we don't have the opportunity to buy such a fumehood right now.

We will keep an eye on the disorder in the fumehoods - it is not satisfactory, and we appreciate you telling us this.

Comment 10

It could be nice if the current materials in the deposition systems could be seen directly in labmanager, and not e.g. in a weekly mail such as with the Alcatel. Also, labadviser is very nice - but a little sparse on the info. Maybe you could remind customers more often that they should contribute?

Action:
We are working on a solution with metals seen in LabManager right now, we expect to implement this before April 2012.

Comment 11

Some equipment are very often out of order.

Action:

The comment is not very detailed but we will try to give a qualified answer. We have had major problems with the handling of wafers in DRIE-Pegasus. It seems to have been a combination of hardware issues (which were solved by SPTS in August) and a user/wafer-sensitive loading procedure (revised in August after the service visit). After this the tool has been working very stable. Another weak point is the old Track-spinner system. We are right now working on finding a replacement for this.

Comment 12

Level of cleannes in ovens is critical for our processes. It seems that this is not monitored enough. It is interesting for customer to see the control charts for this.

Action: No action
Presently we do not monitor the cleanliness of the furnaces. We rely on user instructions and tight cross-contammination rules to keep furnaces clean. The main reason for this is that it is really hard to measure the contammination of such processes and we simply do not have any tool that can do this.

Comment 13

Sometimes there are not enough cleanroom wear of right size.Sometimes some equipments are very heaviliy booked. I experienced once that the old part of cleanroom was closed for more than 30 minutes without notification after the planned close. It would be nice to have drinking water in the changing room because it's very dry in the cleanroom.

Action:
Regarding heavily booked equipments we are just about to make a systematic investigation of the data from 2011. If we identify bottlenecks we will go deeper into the problem and see if it can be solved either by better planning (booking rules etc.), by alternative equipment in the cleanroom, or by aquiring new equipment.

Comment 14

No major issues, but two minor comments to improve the normally fine service at Danchip: 1) When training new people and they come with a new recipe, it would be good that the Danchip personel asks if the training also should include optimisation of the recipe. I have experienced that the training of a student was not optimal in terms of how to process many wafers with a new recipe. 2) When e-mailing Danchip personel there often is a long response time. I have experienced this myself, but also students and colleagues have experienced it. It is not just a matter of days, but rather one or two weeks. However, some people at Danchip do have an e-mail response time of just a day or two, which is how it should be.

Action: No action
1) Actually this should not happen. It is very undesireable and generally avoided by Danchip to do both things in one go. It is much better to make sure new users are familiar with a tool before introducing a new process. We are continually trying to plan the required training with customers since the background, processes, supervisor knowledge and perspective varies quite a lot.

2) Response times should not be on the scale of weeks unless special circumstances occour.

Comment 15

It would be better to cancel the booking of equipment in advance when the technician can't make the regular equipment maintenance at that time.

Action:
Thanks for the comment. We agree completely and will include this in our planning of the work.

Comment 16

Better information about new equipment that becomes available would be nice (what is it, what can it do, how to start using it). A more updated labadviser could be usefull (results using the equipment, general info on the equipment, images etc.). Perhaps a monthly competition on the best contribution to labadviser could help improving the site or simply more focus from Danchip personal. A lot of emails are generated by the cleanroom mailing list (equipment out of use, time slots available, reminders, general info etc.). Reading all these mails takes up too much time, hence many users simply move them to another inbox or deletes them automatically! This is a problem when important information is sent out. A separate mailing list or a special kind of email subject that can be easily identified by outlook (and thereby sorted correctly) for critical information would be very helpful in order to separate relevant emails from irrelevant emails.

Action:
Ad. Better information: Thank you for the comment. We need to put more focus into how to inform the user group better on the new equipments. Part of the problem is that often the equipments are very advanced and complicated which can result in quite complicated and prolonged acceptance procedures which can make the release quite "floating". This is not an excuse for low information level - just to point out that we want to improve on the general release procedure, including the information level. The mails to cleanroomusers are not functioning well, as important mails can be difficult to spot among less important mails. Presently we are working on integrating customer competences and other things in LabManager, that will help us directing mail in a much better fashion. Making subject rules is a simple way to organize mails, but we think it is too loose a system for this purpose.

Comment 17

I would also like to commend the Danchip staff on their adaptiveness to new challenges. Not only is new equipment introduced on a regular basis, but when a new fabrication procedure is devised the staff is quick to help iron out the details.

Action:
Thank you very much, positive feedback is highly appreciated.

Comment 18

The III-V aligner was malfunctioning for >8 months without the proper actions taken from Danchip. I'm very unsatisfied with that.

Action:
DTU Danchip is aware that the II-V aligner has had several performance issues, especially on the mechanical side. Therefore, the tool has been given a larger service overhaul in which the microscope gears, stage gears, etc. were cleaned and greased. This work has removed some of the issues. However, the III-V aligner is quite old and still has problems, such as intermittently failing vacuum switches etc. If you are aware of a persisting problem, please inform the photolith group.

Comment 19

Would be nice if Danchip could change some old equipment, like III-V Alligner.

Action:
xx

Comment 20

I put "no option" because it depends what you mean with "overall satisfaction". In terms of technical stuff, I'd put "satisfied" but in terms of "overall" (like including economy transparency, prices, etc.) it's more towards "unsatisfied" or even "very unsatisfied".

Action: Preparing information material
There seems to be a growing interest in Danchips prices and how they are calculated. We are working closely together with the ABC-group at AØR and economy center west to prepare some material which is both correct and understandable. More information will follow when we know more.

Comment 21

More modern equipment, and more service on the equipment so they won't be down for a week at the time...".

Action:
Thanks for the comment - we are also very much interested in getting new equipments both to replace outdated tools and to supply with new capabilities. During the past two years we have invested around 50 MDKK in new equipments which is actual a very high number compared to similar labs in Europe. These investments have mainly been in new areas but we also continously try to identify "weak points" in the existing machinery in order to replace/complement these tools. You are always very welcome to report problems that you identify to us.