Prof. Swati Jha, HOD, ECS Department and Mr. Sumit Kumar, Assistant Professor, ECE Department attended the INUP Familiarization Workshop on “Nanofabrication Technologies” held on 21st-23rd May 2014 at CeNSE (Center for Nano Science and Engineering) Auditorium at IISc. Bangalore. The details for the whole programme has been described day wise and mentioned below:

Day 1: 21 May 14 (Wednesday)

About CeNSE and INUP

Prof. Navakanta Bhat briefed about CeNSE and INUP. He highlighted the facilities at CeNSE and the interdisciplinary nature of Nanoscience & Technology.

Prof. Shiv Shankar shared the details of outcomes of Phase I program & future plans for Phase II (funded by DeitY, GOI).

Inaugural Function

Prof. Rudra Pratap, Chairman, CeNSE formally declared the launch of Phase II of INUP Workshops with selected 110 participants from all over the country in his welcome speech. He talked on transforming education of semiconductors by fabricating them rather than just covering theoretical aspects. He brought out that India is a consumer market till date and we have to transform its global image as an innovator.

The Chief Guest, Dr. Ajay Kumar, Joint Secy., DeitY, Govt. of India who has been instrumental in defining policies in Electronics, shared that Cyber theft is a major threat today. Electronics industry will be 400 Billion Dollars by 2020 and till date we import everything. To combat, the increasing demands, two semiconductor wafer fabs are being set up by two different industry consortiums:

a) Jai Prakash Associates, IBM & Israel based Towerjazz have proposed to set up a Rs.26,300/- crore fabin Greater Noida which will cater to commercial chips.

b) Hindustan Semiconductor’s consortium (including French-Italian electronics and semiconductor manufacturer ST Microelectronics (STM), and Malaysia-based wafer manufacturer Silterra)has proposed to invest Rs.25,250/- crore to set up a fab facility in Prantij, near Gandhinagar.

Lecture 1: Clean Room/ MNCF Scope and Capabilities

Dr. Girish Kunte, Manager, Characterization facility, shared his knowledge regarding state of art Clean Room and MNCF (Micro and Nano Characterization facility) scope and capabilities. He also talked about Mechanical Characterization, Material & Optical Characterization facilities.

Lecture 2: Thin Films for Micro and Nano Systems

Prof. S Mohan provided information on “Thin Films” for Micro & Nano Systems. He described the process of MEMS (Micro Electronic Mechanical Systems). He mentioned that MEMS refer to batch fabricated sensing and actuation system and is integration of Mechanical & Electronic components on the same chip at Micro & Nano scales. He also talked on its interdisciplinary approach. Lecture 3: Solar Cell.

Lecture 3: Solar Cell

Dr. Sushoban Avasthi, delivered his talk on “Solar Cells”. He explained how the energy needs of our country may be easily fulfilled just by extracting solar energy and utilizing it efficiently.

Quiz: Based on Four lectures mentioned above

We participated in questionnaire session by submitting the Quiz which was based on the concepts taught in the lectures.

Lab Tour 1: Clean Room and characterization facility

All the participants were divided into two groups. One group visited the Characterization laboratory and another group visited Fabrication lab facilities at CeNSE.

Day 2: 22 May 14 (Thursday)

Lecture 4: CMOS Integration

Prof. S. K. Selvaraja discussed the basic problems associated with CMOS integration in entirely different manner. He started his lecture from the very basic examples of junctions and gained momentum thereafter. Prof. Selvaraja’s talk aimed towards IC fabrication which comprised of the assembly of various transistors & their interconnections on single platform. He explained the problem which we faced during the integration of CMOS called process integration and described how to overcome these issues during the fabrication processes.

Lecture 5: MEMS

Dr. Rudra Pratap, also the chairman of the ‘Centre of Nanoscience & Electronics department’ and one of the most eminent professors in INUP programme at IISc Bangalore, explained the main ideology as to why we require all these sensors and actuators. Why are they gaining so much of importance in day to day life? He taught the subject in a very interesting manner and highlighted the following in particular.

1. Sensing & Transduction

2. MEMS Sensor Technology

3. MEMS Fabrication

4. Vibration & Acceleration Sensors

5. Pressure & Acoustic Sensors

6. Gas Sensors

Lecture 6: Micro-fluidics

Prof. V. Venkataraman cleared the concepts of micro-fluids which are basically for biological samples having micron scale range from 1-100microns and also discussed some PDMS (Poly DiMethylSiloxane) devices using soft lithography. He also discussed the concept of electro-wetting.

Lecture 7: Nanomaterials

Prof. S. A. Shivashankar started his talk with the basics of Nanoscience & Technology. He is one of the senior most professors there. He threw light on different Nanomaterials & their structures w. r. t. their properties like 2-D structures having 1-D confinement (e.g: thin films, planer quantum wells, super lattices etc.); 1-D structures have 2-D confinement (nano-wires, quantum wires, nano-rods, nano-tubes etc.); 0-D structures having 3-D confinements (e.g quantum dots etc.).

Quiz: Based on Four lectures mentioned above

We participated in Quiz which was based on the concepts taught in the previous four lectures.

Lab Tour 2: Clean Room and characterization facility

Once again the world class facilities were visited and we were told about the accessibility of these equipments to the INUP users regarding characterization and other project related work. The following characterization tools are available for 24x7 at the CeNSE:

1). SEM

2). UV

3). FTIR

4). XRD etc.

Day 3: 23 MAY 14 (Friday)

Lecture 8: Advanced MEMS Packaging

Prof. M. M. Nayak’s talk was basically based on fundamentals of MEMS packaging. He was earlier in the ISRO’s team of IC packaging. Packaging is the second stage of MEMS devices after fabrication which is followed by validation & testing part of the device. He enlightened the concept of three M’s i.e. Miniaturization, Multiplicity, and Micro-electronics. Prof. Nayak also discussed regarding the different system design modules and different packaging categories like SOC (System on Chip), MCM (Multi-Chip-Module), SIP (System in Packaging) etc.

Lecture 9: Nano electro mechanical systems

Dr. A. Naik, one of the youngest faculties at CeNSE, disclosed many concepts in NEMS. He explained how NEMS helps in resolving complex problems like detection of diseases not only in human beings but other living creatures as well. He also threw light on curing many minute problems, like drug delivery using capsules & pain less needles which are in use, nano robots for cancer cell detection and prevention etc.

Quiz: Based on two lectures mentioned above

Once again we were handed over the Quizzesbased on the concepts taught in the previous two lectures.

Lecture 10: IPR world & India

Dr. Narahari briefed about the basics in patenting and need to use the innovations for our future so that we continuously nurture the society in a better way. This can only be done by creative thinking and patenting our innovations.

Valedictory Function/ Feedback/ Certificate Distribution

During the valedictory function, can did feedback was requested from the participants with an intention to give away the best to the research community and society at large. Participants shared their responses and observations were noted down by the coordinator, Dr. Sanjeev Srivastava. Based on the results of quizzes conducted and research proposals submitted; only 25 candidates will be selected at a time for the next Hands - On - Training to be held in Jun-Jul14 and Jul-Aug14.