Mr. Mel Burks

Council Member Biography

Mel Burks is with Tech Quest Research, LLC, an engineering consulting and market research company providing in-depth analysis and due diligence reporting on semiconductor manufacturing and capital equipment suppliers. He is an acknowledged engineering professional within the semiconductor, test & measurement and PV sector. He held positions in semiconductor manufacturing and semiconductor capital equipment sectors. Mel has over 30 years of direct involvement in various semiconductor technologies including lithography, thin-film deposition, ion-implantation, etching, surface preparation clean and metallisation. His knowledge-base is on wafer fabrication processes and advanced semiconductor technology nodes down to 20nm. For photovoltaics, he is knowledgeable on current polysilicon manufacturing techniques and reactors types, “thin-film” solar-cell variants using amorphous silicon, microcrystalline, CdTe and CIGS. Mel held positions at ON Semiconductor, AMI Semiconductor, Western Digital, Texas Instruments and Candela Nova / Solar Engineering. He has also done contract work throughout the US, Canada, and Asia for such companies as TSMC, Hitachi, Hynix and Motorola. Mel regularly attends industry trade shows and technical seminars at SEMICON, SPIE, CES and IEEE events and can discuss current semiconductor industry topics such as 450mm wafers, EUVL (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography). (This is me - Update Profile)

Employment History

2008 - Unspecified

Founder / Senior Partner, Tech Quest Research, LLC

2008 - 2008

Principal Engineer, ON SEMICONDUCTOR CORPORATION

2003 - 2008

Yield and Failure Analysis Engineering Manager, ON SEMICONDUCTOR CORPORATION

1997 - 2003

Thin Films Section Manager, AMI SEMICONDUCTOR, INC.

1988 - 1997

Principal Engineer, AMI SEMICONDUCTOR, INC.

1985 - 1988

Co Founder, Candela Nova / Solar Engineering

1983 - 1987

Applications Engineering Manager, ENTEGRIS, INC.

1976 - 1983

Process Engineering Manager, Western Digital Corp