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Instructional Materials for a Technician-Level Course in Plasma-Aided Manufacturing David M. Hata Portland Community College

Abstract

Plasma-aided manufacturing is a critical technology in the manufacture of integrated circuits, MEMS, and other nano-scale components as well as the surface modification and coating of a variety of materials. As a result, there is a growing need for technicians to be equipped to install, maintain, and troubleshoot plasma-based tools. Community colleges have been ill-equipped to meet this need, lacking educational materials, teaching laboratories, and knowledgeable faculty.

Portland Community College, through a grant from the Advanced Technological Education Program at the National Science Foundation, has addressed this need by developing technician-level educational materials, prototyping a teaching laboratory for plasma-aided manufacturing, and training community college faculty.[1] This paper provides a summary of PCC’s three-year development and implementation effort.

Introduction

The lack of instructional materials is a major deterrent in developing and implementing a technician-level course in RF plasma processing at the community college level. A search of the literature produced only graduate-level textbooks.[2,3]

Equipment needed to implement a teaching laboratory to support a technician-level course was also lacking. Equipment to support simple plasma demonstrations was available from scientific equipment companies, e.g. Fisher Scientific, but no plasma training systems were on the market. Low-end process tools that could be adapted to serve as a training system in a teaching environment were available, but the minimal cost of these production systems was in the range of $60,000 to $80,000.

Given these deficiencies and the fact that few community college instructors had the technical experience in plasma-aided manufacturing to produce needed instructional materials in RF plasma technology, virtually no courses in RF plasma technology were being offered in technician-level degree programs. To address these deficiencies, the National Science Foundation awarded Portland Community College a three-year grant through their Advanced Technological Education Program. This paper describes the products and results of this three-year project.

“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Hata, D. (2005, June), Instructional Materials For A Technician Level Course In Plasma Aided Manufacturing Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15304