AEMP General Information

The Engineering Research Center for Advanced Electronic Materials Processing (AEMP), established by the National Science Foundation at North Carolina State University, is developing the techniques needed to boost America's competitive position in semiconductor manufacturing. The program involves collaboration among chemists, physicists, materials scientists, and electrical, mechanical, chemical, and computer engineers, and involves graduate and undergraduate students in various disciplines, as well as advisors from industry.

NSF initially provided $26 million in funding over eleven years under its Engineering Research Centers program, which unites universities, industry, and government in cooperative research. The NSF ERC represented a joint effort with researchers from North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Duke University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC). AEMP developed technologies for in situ , single-wafer processing (cleaning, deposition, etching). The program dealt with automation and control of the individual processes and their integration into single-wafer processing module clusters.

More recently a major emphasis within AEMP has been the SRC/SEMATECH Front End Process Research Center (FEP RC) which focussed on the materials and processes needed for high dielectric constant gate stacks and for ultra-shallow junctions and contacts for advanced VLSI devices. This center made key contributions to the choice and development of materials and processes used in high k/dual metal gates in the semiconductor industry. The FEP RC involved 17 faculty members from 9 different universities: NC State, Penn State, Rutgers, SUNY Albany, UC Santa Barbara, Minnesota, UT Austin, UT Dallas and Yale.

The Center offers a strong academic program in electronic materials processing for undergraduate and graduate students. AEMP gives students direct contact with industry and rich interdisciplinary research experience with sophisticated processing equipment and modern microelectronics facilities. Currently, the Center seeks to support students through research assistantships, graduate fellowships and undergraduate scholarships.

The Center is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the NCSU Nanofabrication Facility (NNF) and the Triangle National Lithography Center (TNLC), a joint NCSU/UNC venture. The NNF and TNLC, which is an affiliate of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), provide access to nanofabrication tools in cleanroom facilities to the university research community and to industry and government researchers nationwide.

One of the major goals of the Center is to develop and maintain close ties with industry. Interactions with industry include those through the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and SEMATECH.