Bruce Gittleman, Ph.D.,
Staff Manufacturing Scientist

Dr. Bruce Gittleman has 17 years experience in thin film equipment, process development and thin film metrology. Some of Dr. Gittleman’s key areas of expertise are in understanding the equipment-process interrelation and developing metrics to evaluate unit processes and thin film devices. He has particular expertise in sputtering, including standard DC, pulsed DC, ionized PVD, and RF as well as thin film analysis and materials integration. Prior to joining ITN, Dr. Gittleman spent 3 years working for Infinite Power Solutions (IPS) optimizing sputtering equipment and processes for thin batteries. He also was responsible for managing the daily operations of the battery production line. Prior to joining IPS, Dr. Gittleman spent 14 years in the semiconductor equipment industry in both deposition and metrology technology. He served as Principal Engineer and Metrology Manager for Tokyo Electron’s physical vapor deposition group in Arizona. While at TEL, he worked at bringing the ionized PVD sputter modules for Cu interconnect technology from concept demonstration at the 0.25 µm mode to beta release with a fab compatible process at the 0.65 nm node and played a key role in creating a barrier deposition process that became an industry standard. Dr. Gittleman also managed the site metrology equipment and engineers during his last two years at TEL. Prior to working at TEL, he spent two years with Materials Research Corporation working on process development and advanced hardware testing related to aluminum interconnect technology. Dr. Gittleman also spent four years at HyperNex, Inc., a manufacturer of automated x-ray diffraction metrology, as Technical Marketing and Applications Engineering Manager. His responsibilities at HyperNex included being the primary interface with fab engineers. In that capacity Dr. Gittleman played a key role in winning tool placements to tier 1 fabs. He co-holds patents covering process and equipment hardware technology.