Certificate in Microsystems Packaging

The packaging certificate program is designed for students desiring an advanced degree with an electronic packaging focus. In order to receive a certificate, twelve of the thirty semester hours of course work required for the MS degree must be obtained from a list of approved courses. This list will include one system-level course, one of two "design-build-operate" (DBO) lab-based coures, and two from a list of approved elective courses.

Two out of the four courses are core courses and restricted to a system-level course (ECE 6776) and either of the two hands-on courses offered every year. The other two courses are electives and chosen among a list of approved elective courses with significant microelectronic packaging content (see the list below). The contents of the packaging courses are updated regularly to integrate breakthroughs, advances, developments, and research results into the curriculum. As a result of these, the packaging certificate demonstrates a critical level of packaging expertise to employers.

The system-level course, ECE6776 Microelectronics Systems Packaging Technologies, is a cross-disciplinary microelectronics and microsystems packaging course that reviews and discusses microelectronics and systems packaging technologies for consumer, computer, telecom and automotive systems. It integrates various disciplines including electrical, materials, chemical and mechanical and is meant as an advanced introductory course for graduate students in ECE, ME, MSE, ChE, Physics, and Chemistry. The course provides both fundamental and applied aspects of microelectronics and systems packaging technologies that have been derived from six years of research advances at the Packaging Research Center. It is offered once a year in the fall semester.

A key aspect of this program is to provide students with hands-on courses that simulate the industry experience from electrical and mechanical design of IC, packaging and systems, chemical fabrication of materials to build systems and electrical testing of the final product. The PRC calls it Design, Build- and Operate (DBO). These courses are designed and developed after the two recently developed and offered hands-on instructional laboratories, substrate lab and module lab, that expose students to basic IC and systems packaging concepts and technologies. These two courses focus on: (1) multilevel thin film substrate fabrication and (2) module assembly, reliability, thermal management, and electrical test. Each course includes the necessary theoretical lectures but the primary focus is on laboratory exercises that permit students to design, build, assemble and test microelectronic system packages. The substrate fabrication course includes topics such as interconnect design, dielectric deposition, via formation, metallization, and substrate testing. The module assembly course covers flip chip assembly, functional test, reliability modeling, and thermal management and can be taken as one of the elective courses.

List of possible elective courses with microelectronics packaging content is provided below.

Packaging Elective Courses:

ChE6610 - Polymers in Microelectronics
ECE6140 - Digital Systems Test
ECE6361 - Microwave Design Laboratory
ECE6380 - Introduction to Computational Electromagnetism
ECE6455 - Semiconductor Process Control
ECE6458 - Gigascale Integration
ECE6520 - Integrated Optics
ECE6771 - Optoelectronics
ECE7141 - Advanced Digital Systems Test
ECE8843 - CMOS IC Design and Fabrication Project
ME6124 - Finite Element Method
ME6226 - Fundamentals of Semiconductor Manufacturing and Assembly
ME7228 - Thermo-Mehanical Reliability in Packaging
ME8833 - Thermal Issues in Micro Systems
MSE6510 - Polymers for Electronics and Photonics I
MSE7510 - Polymers for Electronics and Photonics II