Michigan Tech is hosting students this week at the Microfabrication Core Facility, part of the Summer Youth Program.
Students, ages 12 – 14, will learn about the fabrication of silicon-based devices and how silicon wafers are produced.
They will also have hands-on experience in the cleanroom and use the photolithography process to transfer a pattern on a photomask to a silicon wafer.
The pattern has a scale on it from 100 um (diameter of a human hair) to 1 um (diameter of bacteria) to allow the students to understand the scale at which facility users work.
The students will hand cleave silicon wafers to produce dies of gold Michigan Tech logos as a keepsake for their time in the facility.