Brookfield microchip lithographer Photronics Inc. named a former IBM scientist and one of the world’s foremost experts in production of semiconductors to its board of directors.
Liang-Choo “LC” Hsia (rhymes with ‘Shah’) of Taiwan fills a year-old vacancy left by the December 2010 death of board member Willem D. Maris, Photronics said Friday.
Hsia is former senior vice president and senior technical advisor at Global Foundries, a California microchip-production foundry that is a spinoff from Advanced Micro Devices. Global Foundries is the world’s third-largest independent semiconductor producer.
Founded in a garage in 1969, Photronics specializes in making imaging masks, glass plates onto which the tiny circuitry for semiconductors are etched so they can be transferred onto silicon wafers.
Photronics Chairman and CEO Constantine “Deno” Macricostas said Hsia’s expertise will be crucial to the company’s scheduled technological leap in semiconductor fabrication, particularly as circuit pathways, or “nodes,” continue to shrink.
According to Photronics, Hsia migrated to Global Foundries when it acquired his decade-long employer, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, in January 2010.
At Chartered, he played a key role in defining roadmaps for advanced node migration and oversaw its participation in a joint development alliance with IBM for advanced manufacturing to the 22/20 nanometer nodes, Photronics said.
He joined Chartered after three years as technology development director for Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. Before that, he spent more than a decade with International Business Machines as an advisory scientist in various divisions.
Hsia received his Ph.D. in physics from Ohio State University and has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical papers and more than 50 patents.
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