Specialized Instrumentation and Expertise Available to Users
Instrumentation
The Molecular Foundry cleanroom (400 m2), divided into clean-class 100 and 10,000 areas
Lithographic tools
- Vistec VB300UHR EWF electron-beam lithography system
- Synopsys CATS fracturing software
- ZEISS CrossBeam® 1540 EsB system (FESEM-FIB) powered by
- Ar-ion milling
- Evactron oxygen plasma cleaner
- Kleindiek MM3A-EM 3 axis micromanipulator
- XENOS pattern writer XeDraw 2 – SEM and FIB pattern generator system
- Molecular Imprint Imprio 55 flash imprint lithography (S-FIL™)
- Homemade air cushion imprinting system
- Homemade thermal imprinting system
- ABM optical contact printer
Dry etching systems
- Oxford Instruments PlasmaLab 100 inductively coupled plasma (ICP) dry etch (toxic gasses)
- Oxford Instruments PlasmaLab 100 inductively coupled plasma (ICP) dry etch (non toxic gasses)
- Oxford Instruments PlasmaLab 80 reactive ion etch (RIE) dry etch (toxic gasses)
Deposition Systems
- Semicore SC600 e-beam and thermal evaporator
- Oxford instruments FlexAL plasma assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD)
- Oxford instruments PECVD
- Home-made electroplating station gold, nickel, silver
- Home-made close spaced sublimation
Wet processes
- Wafab solvent bench VLF for organic flammable solvents (stainless steel)
- Wafab acid and base bench VLF for wet etching (Polypropylene)
- Wafab utility bench VLF for a large variety of wet processes (Polypropylene)
- VWR ultra-sonic cleaning bath
Utilities
- CEE 100CB spin coater station (spinner hotplate and cooling plate)
- Two VWR ovens (300 degree C)
- VWR vacuum oven
- Ozone cleaner
- Denton desk V sputter coater Au/Pd and carbon
- Critical point dryer
- Homemade manual scriber
- Danville materials micro-cab micro bead blaster
Inspection and Characterization
- ZEISS ULTRA 60 FE SEM
- Horiba JY UVSEL large band spectroscopic ellipsometer
- Veeco Caliber SPM – AFM (CA260701)
- Veeco Dektac 150 stylus profiler (250G8)
- Zeiss optical microscope
- Leica optical microscope
- Microbalance
- Homemade electron flood gun for large area exposure
- Ramé-Hart contact angle goniometer
Software
- L-Edit layout editor CAD for GDSII
- RSoft photonics simulation software:
- FullWAVE finite-difference time-domain (FDTD)
- BandSOLVE plane wave expansion (PWE) algorithm
- FemSIM finite element method (FEM)
Expertise
- Electron beam lithography
- UV imprinting lithography
- Thermal imprinting lithography
- Focused ion beam lithography
- Focused ion/electron beam induced processes
- Atomic layer deposition
- Wet etching
- Electroplating
- Directed self assembling by block-copolymer and imprinting
- SolGel patterning
- Graphene patterning
- Dry etching
- Resist development
- Resist process analysis
- Nanofluidic fabrication
- Nanophotonic fabrication
New equipment descriptions
Close-spaced sublimation in the cleanroom
Close-spaced sublimation is a low vacuum physical vapor deposition technique used to deposit thin films of various semiconducting materials (e.g. CdTe, CdSe). In this system, a substrate is held in close proximity (2~5mm) to a source material. The substrate and source are heated using halogen lamps causing the source material to sublimate and condense onto the substrate due to the temperature differential between the two. Films of various materials can be deposited at rates of >1 micron per minute. In-situ monitoring of the environment is performed using a residual gas analyzer and substrate surface conditions are monitored with Reflection High Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED).
