Low Budget Undergraduate Microelectronics Laboratory; University Government Industry Microelectronics Symposium

摘要

Equipment costs for semiconductor fabrication can be millions of dollars just to get started, not to mention the specialized facility expenses required to house such intricate equipment. Specialized facilities such as clean-rooms, special exhaust systems, cryo-pumps, and gas cylinder storage are a huge investment and sometimes hard to justify for undergraduate education. Chemical usage and disposal can also be a considerable expense. Very few institutions can even afford an undergraduate microelectronics laboratory due to the high start-up costs, high equipment costs and continuous and constant maintenance of such equipment. Many colleges have acquired used equipment through donations from industry. However, donated equipment from industry is not always the most feasible option for small colleges with limited budgets and resources. The technical costs of keeping the equipment going can be expensive, not to mention the difficulty of obtaining parts on used industrial equipment. Through a recent New York State Science, Technology, and Academic Research (NYSTAR庐) grant opportunity, obtained in collaborations with Alfred University and Rochester Institute of Technology, Alfred State College, a small technical college in rural western New York, has started its own low budget undergraduate microelectronics laboratory facility at a fraction of the cost of comparable industrial equipment. This new undergraduate microelectronics laboratory at Alfred State College has been equipped with Modu-Lab semiconductor device manufacturing equipment, which gives students realistic exposure to the semiconductor planer processes.