| The Department Will Be More Reliable by Andrzej Rucinski
The ECE Department is continuously modifying its curriculum. A flexible senior year and very advanced plans for introduction of a Computer Engineering degree are just two examples of recent changes. Thanks to Fairchild Semiconductor and support from the Dean's Office and the ECE Department, it is becoming feasible to enhance our curriculum system by incorporating system reliability topics. As much as there is no need to convince our customers, i.e. industry that our graduates have to be exposed to reliability issues, it is important to know that the Department is going to teach reliability in a practical setting. This is because of a donation from Fairchild allowing us to establish a new reliability laboratory. The new laboratory will be an integral part of the coherent infrastructure for the development of microelectronic systems, as shown in the figure above. Two of the links, the "VLSI & Microsystems" and "Testing" are already implemented. The combination of the two along with the Microelectronic Reliability Laboratory will facilitate a complete cycle of the development of microelectronic systems. The role of the new lab is to verify the reliability of a system and to introduce failures using accelerated testing. In this way, we will be able to qualify both structures designed for reliability e.g. fault - tolerant systems, and those designed to manifest failures e.g. test structures. The cycle should lead to continuous improvement in design and education using the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy. The presented infrastructure in microelectronic systems will be not only an integral part of the proposed Computer Engineering program, but also can be used as a core activity in Collaborative Engineering. Collaborative Engineering is an interdisciplinary curriculum where students across the disciplines work together on common projects. The main purpose of the donated equipment is to create an accelerated testing (HAST) capability at UNH. The HAST chamber used by Fairchild is shown below left and similar equipment will be available at UNH this coming fall. The donated equipment will be used for verification and testing microelectronic devices (VLSI chips, PCB boards, and microelectronic systems) in research, education, and service. Over the last couple of years, the ECE Department has been extensively working with Fairchild Semiconductor. As a result, the expertise in failure mechanisms such as corrosion in microelectronic devices has been developed. The same infrastructure, including the equipment in the Microelectronic Reliability Lab, is planned to be used in research in the area of non-intrusive, low-maintenance health monitoring in microelectronic systems.
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