Position within Covesion

Process Engineer

What are your credentials / past work experience that make you suited to your role in the company?

I have 20 years’ experience working as a process engineer and technician specialising in a range of different areas such as SEM, cryogenic electron microscopy and lithography as well as multi-discipline experience in diffusion, wet and dry etching, chip dicing, COSHH, and ERT (?).

This is complemented by laboratory management experience. I spent a number of years managing The James Bullit laboratory in the Nanotechnology Centre at the University of Bath. We built the facility from a start-up through to a miniature representation of industry as a micro fabrication plant with a cleanroom and all the semi-conductor toolsets and systems that were required. My remit included servicing and upgrading all the equipment along with its regular maintenance and personnel training. I also had overall responsibility for facilities, purchasing, health and safety and finance.

Covesion needed a process engineer with semi-conductor experience to help with all the cleanroom processing, dicing and polishing of the crystals as well the assembly of the accessories such as the heaters and temperature controllers.

What is your favourite part of your job?

For me, the favourite part of any role is looking at rectifying processing issues and failure analysis. This can help to increase yield through improving the efficiency of different processes because often it is when things go wrong that you are able to gain a deeper understanding.

I am interested in anything that goes wrong, why it has happened and what needs to be done to fix it. You need to understand what has gone wrong and then link it back like a jigsaw puzzle. Then you experiment and research the issue and the jigsaw pieces start to fit together. Sometimes there is that vital bit missing but as soon as you find that critical piece of the puzzle, then everything else makes sense.

It’s strange to say that I like it when things go wrong, but you learn more about products and processes by having to fix them! I also enjoy interacting with other people, you get that personal gain because often they will have a different viewpoint, different skill, different experience.

What has been your career highlight so far?

I my last job, a customer returned one of our heated components saying it was faulty and that they wanted a replacement. This would have cost us a significant amount of money if I had not been tasked with investigating the claim. By using electron microscopy, we found cracking and heat damage in the component. More rigorous investigation showed an impact point where a probe had made contact the side of our heater and further experiments found tiny droplets of nickel surrounding the impact site. As our heated component was manufactured from silicon carbide and their probe was made of nickel, it was clear that the damage had been caused by the probe.

Problem solving is a transferrable skill and I hope I can bring a lot of my previous experience to my role here at Covesion.

What are the values that drives / anyone that inspires you?

The values I really admire are loyalty, honestly, dependability, open mindedness, really trying to see everyone’s viewpoint so that you don’t miss things. Most importantly though with work, its only ever business and should never be personal.

With regards to what inspires me, I would have to say my past managers. Like everyone, I have had some really bad managers, but I have been very fortunate to have some extremely good managers. I think back as to how they reacted to me at different points in my career and how they made the work ethic and the company ethic grow and their encouragement. I often think…’how can I be more like…’

I am also very inspired by the natural world possibly because I have seen a lot of it at very high magnification. If you look at a butterfly wing or a beetle at ultra-high magnification, the colour you see is made by the light being diffracted, they are not coloured themselves. For all that we have done, for how clever we are we can’t replicate that, what nature produces seemingly so effortlessly. Nature is critical for our future scientific breakthroughs as we have copied so many things from in the natural world to our advantage.

What do you do outside of work?

Both myself and my wife enjoy sea fishing. I also enjoy a bit of gaming as well on the X-Box blasting things! I find it helps to turn the mind off, something to immerse yourself in.

I am into art oil paintings; my favourite artist is George Richard Deakins. I brought a set of oil paints and I am all for giving it a go, but I just haven’t got round to it yet, I need more time and probably discipline! Art comes in all different forms not just visual but writing as well, I love poetry and reading in general. I can pick a book up and be lost straight away, time will just disappear. I quite often pick up books from charity shops especially  if I see a book with a really worn spine, I will pick it up  because I know that it will have been read a lot so it probably going to be worth a go. I have read a lot of books that way.

I published a poem myself when I was younger, it was called Forever Lost and it’s in a book with other closet poets! Not a career highlight but a personal one that I am proud of.

Meet other members of our team

Mike Day

CEO at Covesion

Meet Mike

RongRong Xu

Head of Sales at Covesion

Meet RongRong