Professional and Continuing Education
Pawley Hall, Room 440G
456 Pioneer Drive
Rochester,
MI
48309-4482
(location map)
(248) 370-3177
[email protected]
Semiconductor Fundamentals Certificate Program
Semiconductor technology is a highly complex field that demands proficiency in a range of disciplines, including physics, manufacturing, and device engineering. Not all engineering programs can offer semiconductor and microelectronics curricular and research programs due to the requirement for cleanroom fabrication and sophisticated equipment for manufacturing microdevices. Oakland University (OU)'s School of Engineering and Computer Science (SECS) is fortunate to have a microelectronics credit program with comprehensive courses and a 1400-sq ft, Class 1000 cleanroom in the Engineering Center for hand-on-training. We recently developed a non-credit certificate program entitled, Introduction to Semiconductor Fundamentals, designed to upskill Professional Engineers interested in the semiconductor discipline.
These three topics offer fundamentals to the principles, material structure, fabrication processes of semiconductor devices.
Topic 1: Semiconductor Materials and Devices
This course on semiconductor basics will cover the following topics essential to semiconductors and microelectronics: semiconductor crystals; charges in semiconductor; energy bands of the charges in semiconductors, equilibrium and non-equilibrium states of charges in semiconductors; semiconductor-metal contacts; semiconductor diodes; bipolar junction transistors (BJT) and metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFET).
Topic 2: Semiconductor Fabrication Technologies
This course deals with basic and advanced manufacturing technologies for conventional and modern semiconductor devices and integrated circuits (IC). The topics covered: Crystal structures of semiconductors; photolithography; oxidation; impurity doping and implantation; physical and chemical vapor depositions of thin films; integration and packaging of semiconductor systems.
Topic 3: Building Blocks for Integrated Circuits
This course provides fundamentals of analog and digital circuits in integrated circuits. The topics covered in this course include: diode rectifying circuits; BJT and MOSFET linear amplifiers; IC biasing; reference sources in ICs; methods of improving IC performance; gates and logic ICs; wave-shaping and oscillation circuits.
The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Oakland University supports a variety of renowned researchers, eager to shine through their students. Specifically, the Semiconductor program includes a set of specialists with decades of experience with the cutting-edge technology.
The lead instructor for the program is Dr. Hongwei Qu. Dr. Qu is a professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Oakland University. He has 30 years of experience in semiconductor devices and technologies. Currently his research interest centers at CMOS-MEMS sensors, integration process and materials for reliable connectivity and packaging. He has also conducted research in other areas including solid-state photonic and magnetic devices. At Oakland, he has completed a number of federal and state-supported research projects with grants totaling over $3M. In completion of these projects, he has graduated 5 PhD students and 6 MS students at Oakland. Dr. Qu has over 70 journal publications in these research areas. He has collaborations with many researchers in major universities in Michigan.
Amanpreet Kaur is an Assistant Professor at Oakland University. She received her B.S. degree from Punjab Technical University, India in 2005, M.S. degree from PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh, India in 2007, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, MI, USA, in 2016.
Dr. Kaur has received several awards, including the NSF ERI, Oakland University Faculty Research Fellowship, NIST grant, and Michigan Economic Development Corporation for Developing a Semiconductor Training Program for Automotive Engineers. She is also a senior member of IEEE since 2018 and is currently serving as Associate Editor and Guest Editor for IEEE T-CPMT and MDPI Sensors special issue, "Antenna Systems for 5G Communication Systems. Additionally, she has served as co-chair for the Interactive Presentation Session at the IEEE ECTC conference and International Microwave Symposium (IMS).