BA-SID Professional Person Spotlight

Paul Brunemeier, Ph.D. – Head of Hardware Engineering for GES, Inc.

Paul Brunemeier is a highly experienced leader who leverages teams and technology to solve difficult materials and system challenges for customers. He is currently Head of Hardware Engineering for GES, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of custom equipment for manufacturing, test, and measurement of semiconductor and display products. He leads of team of highly experienced mechanical, electrical, and software engineers in GES’s facility in South San Jose. He enjoys participation in Silicon Valley technical forums like the BASID and benefits from the conversations and contacts that he develops at the meetings. Additionally, Paul served for several years on the board of the IEEE SFBA Nanotechnology Council and was the 2016 chairman. Paul got his start in research and hardware design during his undergraduate years at the University of California at Davis Radiobiology Laboratory, developing ultracentrifugation processes and equipment for the study of effects of airborne particles on lung tissue. For his graduate work, he went on to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was fortunate to join the laboratory of the inventor of the first visible semiconductor injection laser, Nick Holonyak, Jr. Paul’s thesis work explored the use and limitations of liquid-phase epitaxy for making quantum well laser diodes. His simple laboratory setup was able to produce quantum wells as small as 90Å in width, which he tested as lasers, and he still holds the record for the most crystallographically-uniform compound semiconductor alloy material. His UIUC Ph.D. is in physics. After graduating, Paul returned to his home state of California and worked for Watkins-Johnson Company, building a molecular beam epitaxy facility for development and production of microwave-frequency field effect transistors (FETs) and ICs. While there, he invented a new core FET technology based on a transistor gate etch process that was able to stop on an atomic monolayer, which became a manufacturing standard for the
company.

Next, Paul moved into CMOS silicon processes, joining Lam Research. When the company began suffering severe corrosion issues in a new family of products, Paul invented a plasma flash process that eliminated the corrosion. He also led the team that won Lam’s first etch business at TSMC in Taiwan, starting the manufacturing relationship with one of Lam’s largest customers. While at Novellus Systems, Paul invented a directly photo-patternable ultra-low-k material that eliminated the need for photoresist patterning and dielectric etch, overcoming a major challenge in high-speed device CMOS processing of the time. Next, he indulged his desire to work in startups and joined Amprius, a nanowire battery startup that spun out of Stanford University. During his tenure, he developed some of Amprius’ core nanowire manufacturing processes, built the anode pilot line, and produced the first battery from the company that met Apple’s stringent performance standards. He also worked at Arcanum Alloy Design, performing pilot line scale up of a stainless steel conversion process from a square inch to a square meter in substrate size.

Paul has about 18 technical and trade journal publications and is co-inventor on about 10 patents, most of which entered production.

Here is Paul’s LinkedIn profile:
www.linkedin.com/in/paulbrunemeier/
GES company website:
www.geservs.com/