Start-up company approach to teaching semiconductor processing

An interdisciplinary course in semiconductor processing has been developed and successfully introduced into the chemical, materials, and electrical engineering curriculums that blends new and traditional teaching techniques. A start-up company culture is created in which teams of `employees' composed of students from a range of disciplines and having varied industrial experiences work side-by-side on a long-term (semester) project threaded with short-term (two week) open-ended design components. The long-term laboratory project is to build integrated circuit devices on a 4 inches silicon wafer using a 5-mask pmos metal gate process. The short-term design experiments improve upon the existing IC process or develop a next generation process. In the lecture portion of the course both the unit operations needed for device building and the electrical principles required for device testing are discussed. The cooperative learning environment that is created provides the knowledge content of semiconductor processing and strengthens the oral and written communication skills necessary for success in industry.