The KLA Instruments portfolio of products offers several measurement and defect inspection systems that are tailored for both semiconductor and non-semiconductor markets. The Instruments division is dedicated to its collaboration with research institutes as well as with other product divisions within KLA.

Collaboration with Academia

Ongoing collaborations with university materials science and engineering departments have enabled our engineers to help solve problems that impact current research. This, in addition to the collaboration that occurs within KLA’s teams, continues to drive innovation across the company.

Working closely with university professors, the Instruments group helped develop Indentation University, which comprises a series of webinars, videos, and lab workbooks that provide students with hands-on experience in mechanical testing and material science.

People Make Collaborations Successful

Key to the Instruments division’s success in achieving and maintaining close collaborations with university research departments are its people. We asked Dr. Marzyeh Moradi, our application development engineer, to explain some of the ways KLA Instruments helps its collaborative partners succeed, including university research departments.

Dr. Moradi said, “Professors often come to us for help with their sample analyses, especially when data generation requires additional personnel hours on their end to meet their research or manuscript deadline in a timely manner. Our number one priority is to ensure that they are able to run their experiments successfully and maintain continuity in their research progress, even during unforeseen circumstances and/or interruptions, such as the pandemic.”

Ensuring Customer Success During the Pandemic

One of KLA’s core values is to be indispensable to our customers, whether in a pandemic or not. To enable us to continue to assist our customers while ensuring everyone’s safety and complying with travel restrictions, we set up a system for remote tool operation.

We are often approached for guidance in measuring samples that can be deemed challenging. When customers contact us to help develop customized methods/recipes, we can either run their samples in our in-house lab, or connect remotely to the customer’s tool to help troubleshoot and guide them through the recipe creation and test run. We can also help with data interpretation, based on our industrial knowledge of system and materials behavior.

Although remote nanoindenter operation was previously developed as a KLA service tool, we extended that capability to all our nanoindenter tools to address the challenges of conducting research with limited or physically restricted access to measurement equipment. Using the tool’s TeamViewer application, the user can remotely log in to their computer, view the sample surface, set up the test plan, run the experiment and analyze the data, all from the comfort of their home. This feature greatly benefited our academic colleagues, including in UC Davis, and helped students finish their pending lab assignments just as shelter-in-place restrictions came into effect at the end of their school year in Spring 2020.

The Gold Standard in Surface Measurement Technology

KLA Instruments has established itself in the industry as the gold standard in surface measurement technology by providing best-in-class products that deliver highly accurate measurements with simple and user-friendly operations in both hardware and software interfaces. Read more about KLA Instruments and see how you can collaborate with us, or contact us to learn more about our tool applications.