2025 Fall - Physicist/Scientist Co-Op

Who We Are

Applied Materials is the global leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. We design, build and service cutting-edge equipment that helps our customers manufacture display and semiconductor chips – the brains of devices we use every day. As the foundation of the global electronics industry, Applied enables the exciting technologies that literally connect our world – like AI and IoT. If you want to work beyond the cutting-edge, continuously pushing the boundaries of science and engineering to make possible the next generations of technology, join us to Make Possible® a Better Future. 

What We Offer

Location:

At Applied, we prioritize the well-being of you and your family and encourage you to bring your best self to work. Your happiness, health, and resiliency are at the core of our benefits and wellness programs. Our robust total rewards package makes it easier to take care of your whole self and your whole family. We’re committed to providing programs and support that encourage personal and professional growth and care for you at work, at home, or wherever you may go. Learn more about our benefits. 

You’ll also benefit from a supportive work culture that encourages you to learn, develop and grow your career as you take on challenges and drive innovative solutions for our customers. We empower our team to push the boundaries of what is possible—while learning every day in a supportive leading global company. Visit our Careers website to learn more about careers at Applied.

Job description: 

Our team focuses on screening and designing new chemistries and materials for R&D prior to deployment in high volume manufacturing on Applied Materials tools for a wide variety of logic and memory technologies.  We aim to narrow and accelerate the iterative experimental R&D process.  This position requires specialized depth and/or breadth of expertise in developing, preparing, submitting, and analyzing computational models at the atomic scale leveraging a combination of Ab-initio, Molecular Dynamics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning techniques. The internship will focus on an already identified needs for new materials and chemistry to enable deposition of materials to meet specific material property targets.  There will have flexibility in scoping and recommending what other software tools and methodologies should also be explored to determine how to be meet the material and chemistry property prediction needs.

Key Responsibilities:

• Chemistry and materials design for screening and optimization applications with special emphasis on at least one of the following areas: thermal transport, polymer materials formation and viscosity, low and high dielectric materials, work function metals, precursor design for purity of deposition, and selectivity in etch chemistry
• Scope the diverse cutting-edge materials and chemistry discovery tools on the market for potential future value and prioritize what methods warrant further exploration
• Evaluate a variety of MLIP’s for validation required property prediction and potential extend to fine-tuning of MLIP’s for increased accuracy.
• Recommend atomic-scale changes to structure and/or processing conditions to influence observed properties
• Provide parameters, inputs, and/or guidance for higher-level process, feature, and reactor models
• Hypothesize and test mechanisms to determine the root-cause of observed behavior
• Work effectively with external vendor software providers in testing new features and functionality of new products
• Work effectively with internal multi-disciplinary teams of experimentalists, modelers, and computing infrastructure support teams
• Demonstrate analytical and engineering judgement to scope and assess the appropriate level of model required
• Proactively validate/correlate results with real world data to improve models
• Present complex in-depth technical material in a concise manner
• Advocate for the power of modeling while also communicating limitations
• Serve as a business unit chemistry, materials, or physics expert

Minimum Qualifications:

• Must have a PhD or Master’s degree in Material Science, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related field with an availability range between August 2025 – Dec 2025
• Experience or academics with:
  • First Principles/Ab-initio/Density Functional Theory (local orbital and plane wave), Molecular Dynamics, and/or Monte Carlo methods
  • Machine learning interatomic potentials both at the training stage and inference stage.  Experience with both universal and focused approaches a plus.
  • Programming (Python, C, Fortran, etc.), scripting (python, Linux), and databases
• Knowledge of informatics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science approaches

Preferred Qualifications:

• Polymer structure creation to property prediction such as viscosity
• Inverse design
• Enumerative atomic structure model prediction (diffusion models and beyond)
• Multi-step reaction network discovery
• Materials and/or chemistry discovery
• Virtualization

Additional Information

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The salary offered to a selected candidate will be based on multiple factors including location, hire grade, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and with consideration of internal equity of our current team members. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus and a stock award program, as applicable.

For all sales roles, the posted salary range is the Target Total Cash (TTC) range for the role, which is the sum of base salary and target bonus amount at 100% goal achievement.

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

In addition, Applied endeavors to make our careers site accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us via e-mail at Accommodations_Program@amat.com, or by calling our HR Direct Help Line at 877-612-7547, option 1, and following the prompts to speak to an HR Advisor. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.