Technician Exchange Programme

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Jorge Rocha from ITN reported: “I had already attended conferences, where the exchange of theoretical ideas are common and useful, but this was far more useful for me as a technician, because one can feel the real problems and the real results taking place. As we have in our lab very similar equipment, it was important to see different upgrades and different uses, sometimes different philosophy. For example, it was important to see the advantages of having a facility fully ISO accredited. I can tell you that we already started and programmed some changes in our implanter and in our tandem based on the experience in Surrey.  The downside of this is that one catches the laboratory in a normal working day, so if for example, one expects to see an ion source opened, it's more probable that people are running it, so that depends a bit on chance. But fortunately in 3 days I could see or discuss every item I had in mind!  My thanks goes to everybody in the IBC; they couldn't be more kind. Special thanks to Prof. Russell Gwilliam that being a very busy person found time to answer all our questions to the smallest details.”

Annemie Morel from KUL reported “We got the opportunity to visit the lab and its different beam lines for ion implantation, ion beam analysis and microbeam analysis. First we got a visit to the Danfysik high current implanter. We could compare it with our high current implanter. This was very interesting, because ours is still rather new. Russell Gwilliam and Andy Smith let us follow an As beam QA implantation. We came in contact with a dose control system containing 4 Faraday Cups to improve the uniformity of the implantation. Justin Hamilton showed us the cleanroom. We could have a look at the sample annealing and resistor measurements to check uniformity of the sample implantation.  It was a relief to notice every lab has to deal with similar defects and problems.  We got the chance to ask a lot of questions and could have a closer look at the ion sources, sputter discs, Faraday Cups and other beam parts. We were very pleased with the hospitality and friendly contacts with the people"