M&C research projects get funding green light

InTech, Jan 2000

Washington-Research projects in the measurement and control arena that have been selected by the U.S. Department of Commerce will move forward with funding under the Advanced Technology Program (ATP).

ATP provides cost-shared funding to industry for high-risk research and development projects with the potential to spark important, broad-- based economic benefits for the U.S. This year, ATP officials selected 37 industrial projects.

These are projects that industry on its own could not fully support because of the technical risks involved and for which timing is critical to their eventual economic success in the highly competitive global market, officials said.

Companies get an ATP award based on a review of the scientific and technical merit of each proposal and its potential benefits to the U.S. economy. The program does not fund product development. Applicants must include a detailed business plan for bringing the new technology to market.

The ATP's 1999 competition drew more than 400 proposals. The selected projects target a broad array of technologies, including manufacturing control systems, electronics manufacturing, computer software and electrooptics. If carried through to completion, the cost of the 37 projects will total $102 million from private industry, matched by $110 million from the ATP.

A complete list of the 1999 ATP projects and participants is available at www.atp.nist.gov/ www/comps/index99.htm.

One company chosen for the award is Danbury, Conn.-based ATMI, Inc., whose three-year project will get $1.7 million in requested ATP funds to offset an estimated total project cost of $3.8 million.

ATMI aims to solve a gas waste problem in the semiconductor industry. As semiconductor manufacturers shift from producing 200- to 300-millimeter silicon wafers, and as pressure increases to cut emissions of polluting chemicals and gases, the industry needs to move from post-- process wafer measurements to precise, real-time process monitoring to reduce waste. One common source of waste is the gases used to etch chip features on the wafers. Even after a user completes the job, gases continue to flow into the reactor chamber. Users cannot regulate those gases because there is no effective way to measure the gas concentration in the chamber. ATMI plans to solve this with new, miniature, precision sensors for providing constant feedback as wafers get processed.

Real-Time Innovations, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., has a three-- year project plan with a total project cost of $2.7 million. The company will get $2 million in ATP funds.

One of the most difficult tasks in the development of a complex system such as an aircraft or a process control system for a large plant is the successful integration of dozens or-even hundreds of individual modules supplied by different vendors.

Controllers, software, sensors, displays, actuators, and many other components must be tested together to ensure that the final system actually works. Today, the only way to do this is expensive and time-consuming: bring all of the components and participants together at a single test site. Real-Time Innovations wants to create a high-speed, distributed networking technology that allows a user to conduct complex tests from multiple remote sites.

Vendors can configure a link to the test network that connects with their device or subsystem. The network then orchestrates the signals among all the subsystems. The network connection allows vendors to test as if there were a conventional test-bed connection.

Troy, N.Y.-based Step Tools, Inc. has a threeyear plan with a total project cost of $2.9 million, toward which ATP will contribute $2 million. The company said although manufacturing design is now largely done with computer-aided design and manufacturing systems, control of the machine tools that produce the parts or the molds used to produce a part is comparatively primitive, using numeric codes that specify the path of the cutting tool.

To better integrate the manufacturing process and allow more flexible use of machine tools, Step Tools will attempt to create the software environment for an intelligent manufacturing system that shares data among product design, process planning, and machine tool controllers. A key idea will attempt to put more "intelligence" in the machine tool controllers, allowing them to generate from the product and process information in the database the necessary tool path and cutting instructions.