[labnetwork] Foundry Service Considerations

Fri May 5 03:00:32 EDT 2017

Dear Jacob,
We also do a considerable amount of foundry work. It is rather straightforward for single, established processes but when it gets to development work things are getting more tricky.
Here are but a few of our guidelines:
 As a general rule we define the acceptance criteria on measurable, dimensional features (size, distance, roughness, film thickness, etc) that we ourselves can verify with standard cleanroom characterization equipment. We avoid all criteria that involve functionality of the device in other words functionality that is design related.
We try to involve costs not only for the finished device but also for the different steps toward the device (which is not always possible and depends on the risk/complexity of the task).
We normally charge materials (wafer, masks) separately and independent of the results and return these items to the customer if that is wished.
We calculate process cost including operator, engineer, mask design (if applicable) and multiply by a factor according to the risk and complexity of the task.
We try to explain that all we do is best effort and that is also written in the contract (I know that some lawyers have allergic reactions to that but it describes reality).

There are many more considerations and every development project is special. Do we earn money on foundry work? Yes, but mostly on the single, well established processes tasks. Complex development tasks, more often than not, turn out to be more time consuming than anticipated. Still, we love it out of two reasons: These tasks are a welcoming change and challenge for the process engineers where they can hone their skills. And most important, in normal operations our staff does not go through long, complex, process sequences, so in every complex development project we discover some dependencies and strange behavior that we did not anticipate. In other words once in a while it is extremely helpful to be a demanding ☺ user of your own facility.

Cheers
  Jørg

Jörg Hübner, Ph.D.

 Director

DTU Danchip
National Center for Micro- and Nanofabrication
DTU CEN
National Center for Electron Nanoscopy

Technical University of Denmark

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Danchip

ØrstedsPlads

Building 347

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From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of julia.aebersold at louisville.edu
Sent: 4. maj 2017 17:58
To: Jacob Trevino <Jacob.Trevino at asrc.cuny.edu>; labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [labnetwork] Foundry Service Considerations

Jacob, can you more thoroughly define foundry work?  We do lots of service work for internal and external clients where we charge established process rates + labor.  We have the capacity to do service work, training and maintenance of the facility.  We quote processes for projects, but always say up front that if additional processing or development is needed then the final invoiced price can change.  However, we have guidelines that delineates processing and development of IP.

Cheers!

Julia Aebersold
Manager, Micro/Nano Technology Center
University of Louisville
Shumaker Research Building, Room 233
2210 South Brook Street
Louisville, KY  40292
(502) 852-1572

http://louisville.edu/micronano/

From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu<mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu> [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of Jacob Trevino
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2017 12:25 PM
To: labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu<mailto:labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu>
Subject: [labnetwork] Foundry Service Considerations

Hello All,

For those facilities that take on foundry service projects, I am curious if you have a model that you recommend. For example, is it simply the standard hourly rate plus some hourly engineering charge? What other factors do you consider when developing a cost structure for the potential new client? How do you quote if there is some small development work involved? How do you balance the income that can be generated from these activities verses pulling critical staff time away from training and maintaining the facility?

Any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Jacob

--
Jacob Trevino, PhD
NanoFabrication Facility Director |Research Associate Professor
CUNY Advanced Science Research Center
85 St. Nicholas Terrace, New York, NY 10031
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