Management

Since 2004, Dr. Philipossian has been the Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Araca, Inc., the premier provider of services and equipment to the polishing and planarization industry worldwide. From 2001 to 2022, he was a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arizona, where he held the Koshiyama Chair of Planarization.

He received his BS, MS, and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University in 1983, 1985, and 1992, respectively. From 1992 to 2001, he was the Materials Technology Manager at Intel (Santa Clara, CA, USA), responsible for the development, characterization, implementation, and sustaining of new and existing CMP and post-CMP cleaning consumables, low-k dielectrics, and electroplating chemicals. From 1986 to 1992, he worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (Hudson, MA, USA) as a process development manager focusing on thermal silicon oxidation, diffusion, LPCVD of dielectric and gate electrodes, and wet cleaning technology. Prof. Philipossian has authored approximately 180 archival journal publications and about 210 articles in conference proceedings. He holds 36 patents in the area of semiconductor processing and device fabrication.

Dr. Borucki was the Chief Technology Officer of Araca, Inc. from 2006 to 2017. He was responsible for intellectual portfolio development, new applications, prototype hardware engineering and construction, software development for analysis, data analysis, sales, and customer technical support. Prior to Araca, Inc.'s acquisition of his consulting company, Intelligent Planar, he was an independent contractor specializing in applying physics and mathematical modeling to chemical-mechanical planarization. Dr. Borucki has a BS and a PhD in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

After graduation, he taught applied mathematics and statistics at Lafayette College. He then worked for IBM for 7 years, where he was the primary developer of a finite element program used extensively by IBM for process development. Following IBM, he spent 13 years at Motorola, where he was a Fellow of the Technical Staff. At Motorola, he developed and applied new physical models for different aspects of chemical-mechanical polishing, including pad conditioning and abrasive wear, pad lifetime optimization, pad heating, oxide and copper feature-scale planarization and tiling, polish rate decay, within-wafer polish rate uniformity control, and slurry hydrodynamics. He holds patents in both CMP and SiGe transistor manufacturing and has authored numerous journal papers and proceedings papers.

Mr. Suzuki is a graduate of the Nagoya Institute of Technology, where he focused on the development of computers, their applications, and their utilization. In 1978, he joined Toho Koki Seisakusho Co., Ltd. (Toho), where he introduced an automated manufacturing system (FMS) for machining large parts. In 1998, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the increase in semiconductor silicon substrate size to 300 mm, he helped Toho enter the CMP polishing pad business. In 2000, Toho began manufacturing and selling pad-grooving and surface-preparation equipment. These systems have been an industry standard in Japan, Taiwan, and China for many years and remain the de facto tools for pad grooving and surface preparation.

In 2002, he became the President and CEO of Toho, and shortly afterward (in 2004), he co-founded and co-financed Araca, Inc., together with Dr. Ara Philipossian. Since 2009, Toho has been developing the CARE (Catalyst Referred Etching) method invented by Prof. Yamauchi of Osaka University and working to put it into practical use as an ultra-precise process for final polishing of 50- to 200-mm SiC substrates. This new technology is currently attracting significant attention due to its several environmentally and technologically attractive features. The process uses only water (i.e., no slurry) and requires no pad conditioning. These (and several other key) features enable the attainment of high-quality SiC surface and sub-surface crystal qualities that traditional CMP cannot achieve.

Toho holds numerous domestic and international registered patents and will continue to expand the CARE process globally under its CARE-TEC® trademark.