Desktop simulation of MIT.nano die bonder enables virtual tool training - MIT News

Packaging is the last measurement successful the process for manufacturing a semiconductor device. A captious instrumentality for packing is the dice bonder, which facilitates instrumentality assembly typically by attaching a spot successful a precise determination connected a substrate.

Die bonders are analyzable and tin beryllium tricky to learn, but students and technicians each implicit the satellite tin present practice operating one utilizing a desktop virtual world (VR) grooming simulation based connected the dice bonder located successful the Lab for Education and Application Prototypes (LEAP) connected the 5th level of MIT.nano.

The simulation allows trainees to usage the tool’s controls to signifier lifting and placing semiconductors and solid substrates, and to zoom into the interior workings of the machine, capturing angles and views that sometimes aren’t imaginable during grooming with the carnal instrument.

The dice bonder is 1 of 40 simulations of precocious manufacturing tools planned for the Virtual Manufacturing Lab (VM-Lab), a three-year collaboration betwixt researchers astatine MIT, Clemson University, and the University of Arizona.  Erik Verlage, a probe idiosyncratic successful the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and the VM-Lab task lead, collaborated with Anu Agarwal, MIT main probe idiosyncratic astatine the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) and person of LEAP, and Sri Priya Sundararajan, an manufacture advisor who is the task manager for the simulation. The task is funded by the Office of Naval Research.

The researchers judge VR instrumentality grooming could assistance code the skills spread facing U.S. workers successful this assemblage by making specialized grooming much wide disposable and by amended preparing users for erstwhile they get hands-on grooming with carnal tools.

Simulations democratize access, says Sundararajan. “People volition beryllium capable to larn a precise utile concern accomplishment that, if they enactment it connected their resume, volition marque them much charismatic arsenic occupation candidates done the usage of this VR simulation.”

A LEAP to VR

The archetypal grooming modules created by the VM-Lab focused connected optical fibre manufacturing astatine Clemson University. When the clip came to enactment connected further simulations, Agarwal thought the laboratories astatine MIT.nano contained tools that would lend to the project’s goals. “The VM-Lab aims to grow entree to training,” says Agarwal. “The dice bonder is simply a analyzable but modular physics and photonic packaging tool, and respective tools successful MIT.nano autumn into this aforesaid category.”

For machines similar the dice bonder, engineers and technicians indispensable typically go on-site for training. On-site grooming is intensive due to the fact that it is compressed into a abbreviated play of time. It’s besides costly due to the fact that of mislaid accumulation clip connected the instrumentality successful industry, not to notation the imaginable costs if a caller institution worker oregon pupil accidentally damages the instrumentality oregon the fragile semiconductors successful a assemblage teaching lab.

“We wanted to make a grooming process specified that erstwhile students went on-site, they would already person the primer connected the fundamentals earlier they arrived,” says Sundararajan.

Perhaps fittingly, the squad that developed the dice bonder simulation was a far-flung crew. Several members person never, oregon rarely, seen the LEAP dice bonder successful person. Drew Weninger, a third-year postgraduate pupil successful DMSE prof Lionel Kimerling’s Electronic Materials Group (EMAT), was the eyes and ears for the team, demonstrating the dice bonder implicit Zoom and taking photos and videos of the instrumentality from each angle. Weninger precocious saw his enactment wage off: “I noticed during a footwear campy that students who learned from the dice bonder simulation earlier they were trained connected the carnal instrumentality were not overwhelmed with the terminology, software, and hardware, compared to those who did not person the simulation experience.”

Karina Martínez-Reyes, a summertime probe student successful MRL, and a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates student from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, helped constitute the storyboards and database of parts for the project, with assistance from the machine’s manufacturer. “Karina could not question to MIT for her internship owed to the pandemic, truthful she learned astir the instrumentality wholly from unrecorded simulations provided by Drew,” Agarwal recalls. “And if it worked for her, we were assured it would enactment to bid a distant user.”

An extended redesign of the graphical idiosyncratic interface by the VM-Lab squad helps learners navigate the instrumentality hardware successful the VR situation with ease. Kenan Cicek, a DMSE Fulbright scholar, integrated the MIT information and ported it to the Clemson University Center for Workforce Development team, who created the VR simulation. “Co-leading a multi-disciplinary squad was a large learning experience,” says Cicek. “The extremity effect was heartwarming erstwhile learners, some engineers and technicians, benefited from the instrumentality simulation.”

Training for the future

One of the goals of the VM-Lab is to survey however students interact with the simulations and whether they tin assistance chopped down connected grooming time. Previous studies amusement that interactive visualizations are much impactful than substance explanations oregon adjacent videos, Verlage says. “Students study liking these amended and feeling much assured erstwhile they get to the existent tool.”

In the adjacent steps of the project, Verlage and his colleagues volition grow the simulations to lucifer thing approaching an acquisition game. Instead of pursuing a step-by-step procedure, the simulation volition let students to research the instrumentality and usage it successful their ain mode to execute a specified goal, helium says.

Eventually the simulations whitethorn usage immersive headset virtual world tools and haptic feedback assemblage suits, Verlage adds. “We would emotion to commencement moving connected the cardinal probe of trying to really marque these simulations beryllium a small much tactile, utilizing the instrumentality astatine the MIT.nano Immersion Lab.”