The University of Vermont and GlobalFoundries are partnering to create a new laboratory that will offer students high-tech learning opportunities and the company access to a trained workforce.
The partnership allows the college to establish two labs: the Device Characterization Lab, where students will analyze semiconductor chips and wafers, and the Clean Room where chips, each of which can contain up to millions of transistors, can be built.
GlobalFoundries Fab 9 Vice President and General Manager Kenneth McAvey says the creation of the lab is a natural outgrowth of a years-long partnership with the college.
“This is just a continuation of that partnership building on our record internship program with UVM, several keystone senior projects that we do on a yearly basis. And then building on that this is a natural evolution of that partnership putting state-of-the-art device semiconductor equipment in their labs to grow the next generation of talent.”
The day before a ribbon was cut celebrating the opening of the UVM labs, GlobalFoundries announced It had received $35 million in federal funding to increase manufacturing of GaN, or gallium nitride, silicon semiconductors at its Essex Junction, Vermont plant. While the funds do not directly go to UVM, McAvey says it will galvanize the relationship with the university.
“The skills and the talent that we will develop through this partnership will be directly related to the GaN technology that we’re currently developing in FAB-9 in Burlington, Vermont. We’re really proud of our partnership with the United States government, very thankful for this funding and it’s going to fuel innovation for decades to come. This new GaN technology being made here right in Burlington, excuse me, Essex Junction will go into future generations of electric vehicles etc. So this work that we’re doing today in terms of growing the skills will directly transfer to our factory and will fuel gallium nitride technology development for generations to come.”
UVM Dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Linda Schadler says the new labs provide students an opportunity to immediately join the workforce following their high-tech training.
“They’ll be taking courses in design of semiconductor chips. That doesn’t use the equipment but that’s obviously important. And then the other piece is they’re going to be doing characterization of chips. So they’ll get chips from GlobalFoundries. They’ll be able to probe them and test the electronic characteristics, find failures in those chips. We have microscopes that they can take a close look when they identify those failures. We have some equipment that can kind of do visual 3D slicing through using x-ray tomography piece of equipment to see really small defects inside the chips that might not be on the surface. And then they’ll also be able to manufacture chips. Not at the scale that they do at GlobalFoundries but with the same concept where they put down the various materials and the layers that are needed to make a chip.”
UVM Vice President for Research and Economic Development Kirk Dombrowski says the opening of the new Device Characterization Lab also launches a semiconductor certificate program.
“Engineering degree programs are highly governed. A certificate program says in the process of going through and meeting those nationally mandated standards you’re going to also take courses that really focus in and complement your other courses on a particular kind of area. A certificate program is meant to indicate you’ve come out of it with a very specialized expertise.”
UVM is a land grant college and Dombrowski says the partnership is an example of the college moving toward a new land grant mission.
“Where the exchange of knowledge is two ways. The exchange of talent is two ways. It’s no longer a world in which all of the good ideas live in the university. And it’s no longer a world in which companies can have a business model and a product line and continue for 50 years. Businesses need the innovation. We need that drive and that partnership. That’s where we’re going.”
Classes in the new lab and certificate program began at the beginning of the fall semester.
