Knowledge management supporting education and research at a university cleanroom

Abstract

At the university, each institute or chair can be seen as a small independent enterprise in respect of education and research. For this reason, the efficiency of management as well as the improvement of education and research within this unit is more and more at a premium. The students need a good working environment and the opportunity to gain and share information in order to carry out successful research and course work. This paper shows how education at a university semiconductor laboratory can be improved by using a content management system to build a knowledge management system. The structuring and implementation will be shown as well as students’ rating of it. The results support the conclusion that the knowledge base is a great step forward for improving education and research in a complex environment.

Keywords:

• open source software
• engineering education
• plone
• zope
• knowledge management
• semiconductor technology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Nowack

About the authors

Linda Nowack received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Dr.-Ing. from the TUM, Munich, Germany. Since February 2005, she is a research assistant in the group of Professor Hansch at the Institute for Technical Electronics at TUM. Her current research interests are quality and knowledge management systems for research laboratories at universities. She is responsible for the exercises in Semiconductor Sensors and also the lab course in Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Thomas Maul

Thomas Maul received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the TUM, Munich, Germany, in 2005. Since 2005, he is working on his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering also at the TUM. His fields of research are in semiconductor technology for future nanostructures, especially the research of current-stabilised Field-Emitter Arrays. He is responsible for the exercises in IC Manufacturing and also the lab course in Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Werner Kraus

Werner Kraus was born in Augsburg, Germany. He received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the TUM, Munich, Germany. Since January 1997, he is a research assistant in the group of Professor Schmitt-Landsiedel at the Institute for Technical Electronics at TUM. His current research interests are investigations about robustness of analogue circuits concerning gate tunnelling currents in VLSI technologies. He also is responsible for all issues belonging to the cleanroom at the institute.

Walter Hansch

Walter Hansch received a Diploma in physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany, in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, he worked as a research fellow at the SIEMENS semiconductor Lab in Munich, Germany. In 1989, he joined the University of Federal Armed Forces (UFAF), Germany, working as a research associate on the fabrication and physics of nanoscale devices. He received his Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from UFAF in 1991. From 1991 to 1997, he was Assistant Professor of ‘Nanoelectronics’ at UFAF. His group discovered the self-assembling growth of silicon to nanostructures and fabricated the world's first vertical MOSFETs with channel lengths down to 50 nm. In 1997, he was invited by the Japanese Science and Technology Corporation (JST) to work as a Visiting Professor at the Research Centre for Nanodevices and Systems of Hiroshima University, Japan. In 1999, he was appointed as a Fellowship Professor of Infineon Ltd. for ‘Semiconductor Manufacturing’ at the TUM. He is the author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers, conference talks and patents. His lectures cover the fields of semiconductor technology, novel devices and economical aspects of manufacturing.