Customer Reviews

Microchip Manufacturing

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think this book provides a very useful overview of chip manufacturing for someone new to the manufacturing environment. I recommend it particularly for a university student working in university-industry cooperative education, or simply a student with a part time job in a fab. Such a student would presumably have some understanding of the physics of semiconductor devices, but little exposure to the wide variety of technology that is used to produce IC's. For such a student, this book provides a nice bridge between the academic and manufacturing environments. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to imagine using the book by itself in a stand-alone academic course because it covers so many topics--several of which could have independent courses of their own. This is the reason for only 4 stars.

In sum, this book provides an excellent and needed connection between the depth obtained from formal education and the breadth obtained from on-the-job experiences.

I've been teaching an undergraduate IC course for 10 years, and have used pretty much all the textbooks out there at one time or another. Microchip Manufacturing is the best one I've found. Mine is a pretty intense hands-on course where students build their own working ICs, and the treatment of this book is just right. Some of the other books are needlessly intimidating for undergrads (one book was described to me by a student as drinking from a fire hose!). This covers the basics and covers them well. The only issue I have is that I have to keep reminding the students to look in the appendices, since this is where the hard-core stuff is located.

Great book, I recommend it.

I used this book for a senior level engineering class on device fabrication and I was very disappointed. The book reminds me of a junior high school history book. It is light on technical details, but full of pretty pictures. I would recommend Silicon VLSI Technology: Fundamentals, Practice, and Modeling by Plummer and Deal instead.

This text covers silicon manufacturing processes very well. It doesn't include many calculations, but does introduce most standard technology.