This is a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant which includes both a research as well as an educational component. Research: The microelectronics industry is constantly challenged to improve the performance of the manufacturing processes to respond to the high-performance expectations of a competitive international market. Advanced process control technologies hold great promise for rising to the challenge and delivering tight process control. The objective of this research is to develop and evaluate advanced process control strategies useful for the control of processes of relevance to the fabrication of microelectronics devices. The research addresses three fundamental issues, namely, (1) the characterization of uncertainties that may corrupt the accuracy of process models, (2) the design of robust model-based controllers, and (3) the application of the control strategies to specific processing operations, including plasma etching and metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. An international collaborative research effort will be established with the Ins titut d'Automatique of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. Education: The objective of the teaching plan is to enhance the quality of control- engineering education at the University of Florida through (1) the introduction of computer-aided control design tools in the undergraduate process control course, (2) the design of new experiments in the undergraduate process control laboratory, including experiments with an industrial process control computer connected to a 24-tray distillation column, (3) the development of computer modules for a multidisciplinary Virtual Control Laboratory for control engineering education, and (4) the development of projects for advanced process control design for a graduate control course for chemical engineers. These activities will be supported by computer tools such as multimedia presentations, in-class development of simulations, and the use of projection panels for in-class demonstrations.
