Integration of Microscale Fabrication in an Undergraduate Manufacturing Elective* X. RICHARD ZHANG, TIMOTHY S. FISHER, YUNG C. SHIN, E. DANIEL HIRLEMAN School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 4790, USA. E-mail: tsfisher@purdue.edu FRANK E. PFEFFERKORN Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA This work describes the introduction of microscale manufacturing education into the mechanical engineering curriculum at the Purdue University. Lectures and laboratories on microscale manufacturing are integrated into an undergraduate technical elective course, Principles and Practices of Manufacturing Processes. Three one-hour lectures introduce fundamental microfab- rication processes with a focus on soft lithography. Two microfabrication laboratories have been designed, developed, and implemented using a newly developed pilot facility within Purdue’s Multiscale Manufacturing Center (MMC). Through the laboratories, students gain hands-on microfabrication experience and achieve devices with features as small as 10 m. We expect this work will serve as a model to establish similar manufacturing educational laboratories at other institutions. INTRODUCTION THE IMPORTANCE of the manufacturing enter- prise and the need for improved manufacturing education are becoming increasingly recognized by higher educational institutions across the world. Surveys of American industry have revealed that the number of manufacturing education programs in the United States is growing substantially [1]. Moon [2] recently reported on a manufacturing education model that includes the establishment of a new manufacturing engineering curriculum. Similar curriculum reforms that focus on manu- facturing education have also been reported [3,4]. An outline of the major forces that shaped the development of manufacturing enterprises in the United Kingdom and how these have changed over time was presented by Burns [5]. Brennan [6] described recent curriculum reforms in manu- facturing education toward the satisfaction of academic requirements for professional engineer- ing registration in Canada. Collectively, these studies and initiatives demonstrate significant activity in reforming manufacturing education toward the evolving needs of global industries. Today, microfabrication plays an important role in many promising interdisciplinary areas of science and engineering, including studies at the atomic and bio-molecular levels that employ micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMs). To equip the next generation of engineers, a founda- tional understanding of microfabrication is needed, and a growing demand exists for integrating microfabrication into existing courses on manu- facturing [7]. However, microfabrication education that emphasizes hands-on laboratory experience is often limited to the graduate level because of the expense and complexity of microfabrication laboratory procedures. For instance, a typical chrome mask made by e-beam lithography is very expensive, and it is often impractical for each student in a course to fabricate an individual mask. Common procedures require the use of dangerous chemicals, such as those used in etching processes, that require specialized training and safety certification. On the other hand, soft litho- graphy is a recently developed microfabrication technique based on printing and molding of ‘soft’ materials [8] that involves many of the basic microfabrication processes such as photomask production, spin coating, and photolithography. Unlike silicon-based microfabrication, inexpensive masks and non-toxic chemicals are used in these procedures. Consequently, soft lithography mini- mizes the need for specialized equipment and training, and microfabrication laboratory modules based on soft lithography are quite practical for introduction at the undergraduate level. This paper describes the development of a laboratory facility and its use in a course-based laboratory module employing soft lithography to introduce microfabrication principles. The module includes three lectures and two laboratories and has been integrated into an undergraduate manu- facturing course. The objective is to offer the students fundamental knowledge and hands-on experience in microfabrication. The new labora- tory facility in Purdue’s School of Mechanical * Accepted 7 June 2005. 343 Int. J. Engng Ed. Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 343–349, 2006 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00 Printed in Great Britain. # 2006 TEMPUS Publications.