Robert Weiss

Background

About Robert Weiss

My professional career started at Chevron Research Center with work on solar cells, both thin film (CuS/CdS) and crystalline including binary, tertiary, and quaternary for multifunction cells). Film growth methods were evaporation, sputter, chemical deposition, and CBE - chemical beam epitaxy - a technology invented by Dr. Lewis Fraas employing aspects of MOCVD and MBE. Work with continued when I moved to Varian Research Center where I shifted my focus from semiconductor growth to processing, strengthening my background in photolithography, etch, sputter, and evaporation while working on CCDs and solar. Leaving Varian to join the spin-off/start-up Intevac, work continued, at first, with my position in the Night Vision Division. Later, I shifted to the equipment side of the company with a focus on sputter, Intevac's core technology. The majority of the applied work at Intevac was in support of the hard disk and flat panel display manufacturers. Developing processes and hardware for these industries, I worked extensively with TCOs (especially ITO), reactive sputter of metal oxides, and magnetic media. The expansion of the solar industry around 2005 afforded the opportunity for me to return to solar work. I did so by joining the CIGS thin film solar start-up DayStar Technologies where we developed a novel reactive sputter process for CIGS. Since DayStar, working for Malachite Technologies, Inc, a company I founded, I have provided consulting services to several solar companies along with a variety of other companies where thin film technology is critical to their success.