Electronics packaging education: NSF and IEEE initiatives and modules

The packaging of electronic devices-passives, ICs, sensors, optoelectronics, MEMS-has been identified as a limiting constraint on the design, production and use of high-density or new-application electronics. In addition, many engineers responsible for various portions of a system or device package, and its modeling, thermal management, testing, and assembly, have limited familiarity with some of the basic materials and processes in our field, or need to quickly understand specific issues and design directions in order to complete a design or review task, or add to their basic skills. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided a series of grants over a three-year period which, when paired with funding from the IEEE's Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (CPMT) Society, has funded a number of authoring efforts. Some of this content is now available for technologists and college instructors to use. In this talk, I profile the new IEEE/CPMT educational server site (the CPMT Virtual Classroom) with its many educational modules. There are two areas on the site: shareable content that has been developed by individuals or groups; and an author-support service with a shareware authoring module which instructors can use without cost to create their own content from existing lecture material or presentation slides.