Context

When you extract semiconductors from silicon wafers, they crack. A lot. The question was: how much force are you actually applying, and where? Understanding this could help reduce waste and improve yields.

What I Built

During my master's degree at Université de Lorraine and CentraleSupélec, I did an internship at Georgia Tech, where I designed and built a fully functional measurement device from the ground up. I modeled everything in CAD and Blender, worked with manufacturers to get it built, and integrated four sensors, two on top and two on bottom, to measure the forces being applied during the extraction process.

What I Am Proud Of

It was a true hardware-meets-software project: precision mechanical design combined with data acquisition and analysis. I especially liked that the work was not just about making a prototype look good, but about producing measurements that researchers could trust.

The device worked, and it gave the team a way to measure what was actually happening during the liftoff process. That opened the door to research on reducing cracking and improving semiconductor yields.