An indispensable detour: From a Hunt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to microelectronics packaging

Abstract

After receiving my Ph.D. degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I faced a choice of taking an industrial job offer or pursuing research in nonlinear acoustics as the 1992-93 Hunt Postdoctoral Research Fellow. My argument at the time was rather simple: I can always choose to go back to industry at any time but there will not be another “shot” to be a Hunt Fellow! Having studied fluid mechanics, it was a natural extension to leverage that background to focus on nonlinear acoustics for the Hunt Fellowship, specifically to investigate feasibility of using high-frequency acoustical streaming to replace the cavitation based mechanism to clean micron-sized particle from the surface of silicon wafers. During the Hunt Fellowship, I became interested in electronics packaging: wafer cleaning led to silicon chips, which in turn led to microchip packaging. I have worked in this particular area, starting at Hewlett-Packard, with other companies and now with Apple. O...