Eric Meurice has joined Nearfield Instruments as chair of the supervisory board. No doubt the network of the former ASML CEO will be valuable in rolling out the semiconductor process control technology developed by the Rotterdam-based TNO spinoff. “He brings with him an enormous amount of experience and expertise from the semiconductor industry,” says Nearfield CEO Hamed Sadeghian.
Founded in 2016, Nearfield builds atomic force microscopes (AFMs) that combine high resolution in 3D with high throughput. By scanning wafer surfaces with many needles in parallel, semiconductor manufacturers can determine lot-to-lot, wafer-to-wafer and intra-wafer process variations, which is critical in maintaining yield in today’s leading-edge semiconductor production. Nearfield shipped its first tool in 2021.
Since Meurice passed the baton to Peter Wennink at ASML in 2013, he hasn’t been idle (link in Dutch). The Frenchman has served, or is still serving, in non-executive positions at Arm, NXP, materials technology group Umicore and semiconductor substrate manufacturer Soitec.