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Re: world's smallest steam engine
Posted by: Dick Vennerbeck (IP Logged)
Date: May 09, 2006 08:39PM
<HTML>Jeff,
I was closely involved with the building of this steam engine. It was a study in the ability of MEMS manufacturing. I worked for Lam Research Corp of Fremont CA. We manufactured world-class semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The tool that allowed this steam engine to be made was and ECR-CVD tool. (Electron Cyclotron Resonant Chemical Vapor Deposition) A machine that mixed gasses and deposited pure quartz (SiO2) on the wafer. The "heater" for the boiler is visible in the photo, it's the necked down feature above the "pistons" . The heater is a material called "poly" (polycrystalline silicon) and was doped with impurities to make it electrically conductive. I maintained several engineers on site for several months during this development. The technology that originally made this possible came from NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) in Japan. My job was to bring the technology to the states and do continued development here. Want to guess why the first attempt was a steam engine? By the way the first engine was only a single cylinder!
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Dick Vennerbeck
ex Director Technical Support CVD Division Lam Research</HTML>
I was closely involved with the building of this steam engine. It was a study in the ability of MEMS manufacturing. I worked for Lam Research Corp of Fremont CA. We manufactured world-class semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The tool that allowed this steam engine to be made was and ECR-CVD tool. (Electron Cyclotron Resonant Chemical Vapor Deposition) A machine that mixed gasses and deposited pure quartz (SiO2) on the wafer. The "heater" for the boiler is visible in the photo, it's the necked down feature above the "pistons" . The heater is a material called "poly" (polycrystalline silicon) and was doped with impurities to make it electrically conductive. I maintained several engineers on site for several months during this development. The technology that originally made this possible came from NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) in Japan. My job was to bring the technology to the states and do continued development here. Want to guess why the first attempt was a steam engine? By the way the first engine was only a single cylinder!
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Dick Vennerbeck
ex Director Technical Support CVD Division Lam Research</HTML>
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