"The last time we went through all these steps, it didn't take this long."
"That's because last time they didn't have the stripper in stock, so we couldn't do all the steps."
"Oh."
"What's wrong with the aligner?"
"And why is it hot pink, anyway? I want to put Hello Kitty stickers on it."
We hover around the aligner while the TA scrutinizes the instructions and tentatively pokes buttons. We take turns fiddling around with the various joysticks and squint into the microscope to see if the mask and wafer line up. They don't. This happens after we try to measure oxide layer thicknesses with the Filmetrics machine that also is not working today. Our lab notebooks are woefully blank, but we do save time in all the subsequent steps where we're supposed to measure oxide thickness.
"Why can't they get us a decent aligner? How much did they just spend on that stupid new cafeteria that I can't even afford to eat at? A billion dollars! And we have to do lab with broken equipment!"
This lab takes three hours. On the upside, my protocol jumpsuit was missing, so I snagged a size M one from the stock and got to wear a suit that actually fit.
208 words | March 22, 2005 10:54 PM | Ivory tower