ECE Dept & CNSI: New Semiconductor Manufacturing Courses

From The Robert Mehrabian COE News article "UCSB Launches Hands-on Semiconductor-Manufacturing Summer Courses"

Walk into the Nanofabrication Facility at UC Santa Barbara, and you will notice a lot of high-tech instrumentation and a high-level of focus among staff who are creating the pieces that may find their way into some microtechnology in your phone, your car, your house — perhaps even your body. Training the people to do this work requires equal focus and rigor, and semiconductor-manufacturing companies often have difficulty finding well-trained technicians to operate the complex equipment that enables the industry. 

The UCSB Professional and Continuing Education (PaCE) serves as a partner coordinator with CC-PRIME for the courses, providing student-enrollment services. While the UCSB arm of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI; a partnership with UCLA) and the UCSB Electrical & Computer Engineering Department provide the training facilities. The program was designed with an eye to providing a path, especially for community-college students on the South/Central Coast, into technical industry jobs."

In one work-learn course — the first of its kind in the region, titled “Equipment Maintenance Technician” (EQMT) — eight student apprentices are taught by four instructors (ECE's Prashant Srinivasan & Christopher Wimmel and CNSI's Rachel Schoppner & Brian Dincau) in two CNSI facilities — the Quantum Structures Cleanroom Facility (QSF) and the Innovation Workshop — as well as cleanrooms used by the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. The course is aimed at enabling students to gain entry into the precision-manufacturing industry as equipment maintenance technicians or in equivalent roles. 

The course is intended to provide students with a robust combination of the requisite technical knowledge and disciplined work habits to ensure continuous, contamination-free operation of complex fabrication tools. To that end, participants are trained to service critical equipment used for lithography, oxidation and diffusion furnaces, and plasma ashers. They also learn to read and interpret datasheets, schematics, and OEM manuals, and to rigorously follow and document standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Preventive maintenance routines practiced during the course include lamp calibration and vacuum integrity checks on mask aligners, leak testing and thermocouple validation in tube furnaces, and ashing performance in turnkey plasma tools. Participants gain hands-on experience in diagnostics, parts replacement, and requalification procedures, while cultivating intangible skills such as attention to detail, methodical troubleshooting, safety awareness, and equipment stewardship. Emphasis is placed on logbook discipline, communication with tool users, and recognizing early warning signs of tool drift or failure — all critical to supporting high-yield semiconductor processing.

The second course, “Microchip Fabrication I,” is a semiconductor-manufacturing course covering key microfabrication techniques, including lithography, growth, etching, and metallization. With a focus on practical experience fabricating and characterizing NMOS devices,  the course builds on the core cleanroom skills taught in the CC-PRIME one-week bootcamp “Cleanroom Technician.” Microchip Fabrication I provides training for non-ECE students, working professionals, and non-matriculated individuals who seek advanced skills in semiconductor manufacturing, knowledge that was previously available only to ECE students at UCSB.

In Microchip Fabrication I, students gain hands-on experience in the complete process of fabricating and testing NMOS transistors, starting from a bare silicon wafer. The course bridges theory and practice, guiding students through photolithography, oxidation, doping, etching, and metallization steps used in industry-standard planar-device fabrication.

Students work in a cleanroom environment using professional-grade tools such as mask aligners, diffusion furnaces with solid phosphorus sources, wet oxidation furnaces, and e-beam evaporators for metallization. Each student follows a detailed process flow, learning to interpret process schematics, use design rules for layout, and handle wafers with cleanroom discipline.

As in the EQMT course, students in Microchip Fabrication develop critical thinking and process-troubleshooting skills. They measure electrical characteristics such as threshold voltage, on/off ratios, and contact resistance using parameter analyzers and probe stations. The course emphasizes precision, documentation, teamwork and the iterative nature of device fabrication — all skills essential for careers in semiconductor manufacturing, process engineering, and R&D.

For more information about these courses, please visit the UCSB PaCE website, or contact Ben Werner.

College of Engineering News "UCSB Launches Hands-on Semiconductor-Manufacturing Summer Courses"