INDUSTRY NEWS

Upgraded campus fab to give engineering students taste of chipmaking experience

It's not the same as suiting up for an Intel fab in New Mexico or Ireland, but students at San Jose State University now have a better opportunity to experience real-life chipmaking. The university's college of engineering has opened a refurbished laboratory that will allow engineering students to design and manufacture actual microchips. The university says the facility and its accompanying academic coursework compose the "only undergraduate learning program of its kind in the western United States."

The new Microelectronics Process Engineering fabrication facility (MPE Fab) received $1.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions from Intel, Applied Materials, and other corporate sponsors. The National Science Foundation and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers provided grants. The revamped facility measures 3400 sq ft.

STUDENT RUN: San Jose State's new 3400-sq-ft MPE Fab includes processes such as lithography RIE, diffusion, oxidation, and metal deposition. PHOTO BY: DAVID PARENT, COURTESY OF SJSU

One of the course offerings will allow students to design circuits. Other courses will enable them to manufacture the chips. The remodeled facility can accommodate several large classes at a time. The larger size also allows the college to bring in freshmen and sophomores and give them a taste of microelectronics processing.

"Students in semiconductor-related fields need to have solid knowledge in every aspect of a chip's product cycle from design to manufacturing," says Belle Wei, dean of the college of engineering. "The MPE Fab will expose our students to semiconductor manufacturing experience that previously was only available in industry."

Jai Hahku, an Intel vice president, emphasizes that having the teaching facility in the industry's backyard "is important for keeping Silicon Valley's competitive edge in semiconductor technology."

Students will have the opportunity to work with CMOS technology and the panoply of process tools needed to design and manufacture ICs, the university says. Available processes include photolithography, reactive ion etch, diffusion, oxidation, metal deposition, and metrology. Local suppliers will provide processes that the student fab cannot provide.