Microscope laboratory for undergraduate courses in integrated circuit design and fabrication

As part of the undergraduate courses in electronics and computer engineering in the department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, a significant proportion of laboratory time is devoted to a complete integrated circuit (IC) design from concept to fabrication and testing. An integral part of this work is the microscopy laboratory devoted to this design exercise. In this paper we show how microscopes are integrated into the wafer testing phase of the exercise and how the equipment has been customized to provide an effective introduction to the practical use of optical microscopes in electronics.