NVISION ENGINEERING - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Mechanical Engineer
- Principal Consultant
Christopher Ratliff is a mechanical engineer with over 15 years of experience with machine design, manufacturing, and new product development. His background is diverse including the development of new products for Silicon Valley Group, ASML, Applied Materials, NanoGram and Asetek. His skills include: SolidWorks, ProE, computational analysis, design and tolerance for manufacture, new concept development, and advanced thermal and fluid flow analyses. He also has experience with consumer product industrial design and development. Mr. Ratliff received his Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. He holds five patents related to semiconductor production equipment and was the Lead Engineer in developing the SVG Thermco RVP vertical furnace with over 400 machines installed worldwide.
Before forming nVision Engineering Dr. Bailey was Principal Engineer of deposition processes at NanoGram Corporation, where he simulated and designed CVD and thermal processing components for the solar energy industry, and used advanced material characterization methods for determining performance-limiting defects in silicon solar cells. Dr. Bailey was Manager of Advanced Technology at Aviza Technology (formerly Watkins-Johnson Co.) for over 13 years, where he established the use of CFD and simulations as the foundation of new product and sustaining engineering efforts. Key accomplishments at Aviza include development of batch radical oxidation processes and hardware, across-flow furnace design, APCVD linear injectors, and showerhead reactors for atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems. Dr. Bailey received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with his thesis on defect properties in silicon solar cell materials. He has consulted for solar and battery startups, holds six U.S. patents, and has a publication record stretching back two decades.