| "...the state as a whole comes out on top by gaining a strong industry with a significant number of high-quality jobs." Commerce Secretary Brenda Blanchard |
Technology transfer isn't about selling, it's about building relationships, says Assistant Dean Lawrence A. Casper, the UW-Madison College of Engineering's point person for finding mutually beneficial partnerships between research and state industries.
"It's unusual to find an immediate match between university resources and the needs of a company," he notes. "What happens more often is that a relationship builds over time. As the needs of the company evolve with the progressing relationship, a match also begins to develop." Such has been the case with the college and Hutchinson Technology Inc.
A Minnesota-based company with a large manufacturing plant in Eau Claire, HTI is the world's leading supplier of suspension assemblies for rigid disk drives in computers. (Suspension assemblies are very precise metal "springs" that hold the recording head at a microscopic distance above the drive's spinning magnetic disk.) Casper first approached HTI in 1991, soon after his arrival at UW-Madison. One of his former colleagues at Honeywell had become a research manager at HTI, and the two began discussing the company's future technology needs.
College of Engineering Assistant Dean Lawrence A. Casper (left) and David Brouchous, HTI's advanced process development manager, display processed suspension arms that are ready to go into plasma etchers at the company's Eau Claire plant.
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"HTI was in the early stages of thinking about the application of plasma etching to their manufacturing process," recalls Casper. "In 1991, they used conventional wet etching technology to make their product. But as they looked down the road to future needs -- such as disk drives that would store more and more information -- they realized the requirements for their product would become more stringent and that they might need to adopt this new technology."
In the computer industry, etching is the process of selectively removing materials from a wafer. Wet etching involves using a variety of liquid chemicals to remove the materials while plasma etching uses highly ionized gases. The latter method is more precise at the microscopic dimensions that are used in these products.
Casper kept in contact with HTI for several years, and in 1997 a research c collaboration was formed between the college and HTI. Now says David Brouchous, HTI's advanced process development manager, "If we need to get an 'etch recipe' developed, they can do it right there. They do a lot of work for the semiconductor industry and are quite familiar with these processes."
Working hand-in-hand with UW-Madison researchers comes quite naturally to Brouchous, who before going to HTI in 1997 was a scientist at the college's Phaedrus Laboratory for Plasma Science. Others from UW-Madison have followed a similar path, he notes.
A growing number of UW-Madison alumni -- representing the departments of electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering -- are employed by HTI. More than 30 UW-Madison engineering students have participated in co-op terms or internships at the company since 1991.
While the college's partnership with HTI was the result of one exercise in persistence, similar long-term communication between the Wisconsin Department of Commerce and HTI paid off for the state in 1995 when the company completed the Eau Claire plant, its third manufacturing facility.
In 1997, the company added its second photo-etching plant in Eau Claire. These state facilities now employ more than 2,000 people and use over two dozen plasma etching units to produce thousands of suspension assemblies each day.
Additionally, HTI has begun building its Advanced Process Development Lab in Eau Claire. This process and product research and development facility, which will focus entirely on plasma technology, should be operational early in 2000, says Brouchous.
Commerce Secretary Brenda Blanchard, who also serves on the college's Industrial Liaison Council, says HTI's move to Wisconsin is a perfect example of why it's important for the university to maintain close ties with industry. "In this case, both the university and the company are reaping tremendous benefits," she notes.
"And, beyond a doubt, the state as a whole comes out on top by gaining a strong industry with a significant number of high-quality jobs. Partnerships such as this are a great reason for businesses to locate in Wisconsin."
--By Paul Bauman--
| For further information, please contact: |
Lawrence A. Casper, 608/265-4104
casper@engr.wisc.edu
Copyright 1999 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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Date last modified: Wednesday, 03-Mar-1999 12:00:00 CST
Date created: 03-Mar-1999
