Villach, Carinthia, Austria
Highly motivated semiconductor process engineer with years of experience in process development and control, tool installation, reliability and failure analysis and automated data processing.
Sustaining and improving dry etch production processes as well as qualifying new tools after installation. Close collaboration with clean room staff and other departments (process integration, failure analysis etc).
Developed new reactive ion etching (RIE) processes, to be employed in the fabrication of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) heads.
Developed reactive ion etching (RIE) processes for perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) heads. Lead role in reliability analysis of recording heads in order to determine failure mechanisms to improve future products. Also worked on pattern recognition and metrology for automated electron image analysis.
Performed research on magnetic materials and superconductors. I have been involved in the development of novel compound materials based on manganites that show exceptional magnetoresistance (with applications in e.g. MRAM and hard drive read heads) and multiferroic behavior (which shows great potential for spintronics applications). In another project, I discovered a significant enhancement of the current-carrying capability of borocarbide superconductors at the transition to the antiferromagnetic phase. I have also worked on intrinsic vortex pinning in YBCO and pnictides in order to find similarities in these two superconductor systems. Work involved the use of nanofabrication tools (photolithography, focused ion beam) and various measurement techniques (transport, magnetization).
Pursued several topics of my PhD research further, while working in the same group. Only the top 10–15% of PhD candidates are eligible for this type of appointment, and the fellowships are awarded based on the research proposals submitted by the applicants.