Materials Science | Electrical Engineering internship: feedforward compensation of dielectric relaxation

Job description

Introduction The Tribology and Electrostatics research group of ASML looks into the long-term solution roadmap for ASML. For this purpose, we explore various technological solutions that are not mature yet. At the moment, we are working on dielectric materials for high-precision electro-mechanical systems. When an electric field is applied and subsequently removed, these materials exhibit dielectric relaxation, leading to a time dependent decay of surface potential. In practical applications, this decay directly translates into pressure drift, negatively affecting positioning accuracy and system stability. Since dielectric relaxation behavior is repeatable and history‑dependent, it offers an opportunity for feedforward compensation. Your Assignment: This internship focuses on developing and validating such a feedforward strategy from experimental data. The main goal is to design a feedforward voltage scheme that minimizes surface potential decay after contact, thereby reducing pressure drift. Some of your tasks will involve: Analysis of dielectric relaxation and recovery measurements for ceramics and glassy dielectrics; Modeling relaxation behavior using suitable time‑dependent mod...