Instructional Laboratory supports courses for Georgia Tech students combine lecture and hands-on fabrication experience. Both undergraduate and graduate students gain valuable real-world relevant experience with advanced tool availability, laboratory, and cleanroom environments.
IEN provides support to Georgia Tech colleges and schools for disciplinary and inter-disciplinary courses in microelectronics devices and microelectronics packaging. These hands-on courses some of which are conducted in world-class prototype cleanroom laboratories offer students the opportunity to experience complete process cycles from design to fabrication.
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ECE 4452; Integrated Circuit Fabrication - a course in which students get the opportunity to learn about and experience the manufacturing technologies associated with integrated circuit fabrication. Ultimately the students fabricate basic integrated circuit elements (NMOS, PMOS, capacitors, resistors) as well as more complex CMOS circuits such as ring oscillators, inverters, NAND gates, and NOR gates. The course culminates in the characterization of the fabricated devices and circuits as well as a process design project aimed at improving the existing manufacturing process.
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ChBE 4050/6050; The Science and Engineering of Microelectronic Fabrication - a course for senior level undergraduates in ChBE (or Chemistry) and graduate students in the chemical sciences interested in semiconductor materials and fabrication. The course presents the fundamentals and applications of materials and processes used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices, including integrated circuits. The chemical and engineering issues associated with the processing of the materials used in the fabrication of microelectronic devices are covered. The course will have five hands-on laboratory experiments which form the basic unit operations used in semiconductor microfabrication. The course will provide the fundamentals of materials synthesis, chemical and mechanical properties, and chemical reactions. In addition, the sequence of processes used to fabricate metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuits will be presented. The set of exploratory experiments includes silicon dioxide deposition, photolithography, diffusion and semiconductor doping, metallization and silicide formation, and integrated circuit testing.
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ME/ECE/ChBE 6229; Introduction to MEMS - We designed this course to span all of engineering to explore the theory and practice of MEMS (micro electrical mechanical systems) fabrication, which integrates hands-on learning with the classroom. Graduate students learn the fundamentals of engineering on the microscale while concurrently utilizing the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology Cleanroom throughout a 9 laboratory set to create microresonator sensors (shown below). These sensors are simpler versions of the accelerometers that exist in students’ smart phones. Students have stated that the intellectual foundation of the classroom and the hands-on skills learned in the cleanroom were the best aspects of the course.