Learning by virtual doing: protocol simulators for surface analysis in microelectronics

The paper details how state-of-the-art technologies like multimedia, computer modeling and simulation may be applied with profit for education in microelectronics. It presents a set of multimedia courses on material characterization of VLSI wafers with different techniques. The major interest of the courses is the protocol simulator available for each technique. Such a simulator aims at giving the user a good look and feel of the real and complex experimental setup by allowing him to perform actions on its simulated model, according to the real protocol of use. Thanks to an appropriate design methodology, it is pretty easy to adapt the protocol simulator engine to any industrial or academic specific setup and to couple it with other simulators (like spectrum simulator), thus providing virtual instrumentation on surface analysis.