Teaching Cleanroom
CNEU has a teaching cleanroom constructed for, and dedicated to, delivering a hands-on nanotechnology synthesis, fabrication, and characterization experience for both undergraduate and graduate students. This class 10,000 cleanroom space is also equipped to deliver a remote operating experience for use in high school and college classrooms across the country.
Class 10,000 Cleanroom (EES)
The cleanroom contains all of the tools that are sensitive to particle contamination in the lab. Air inside the cleanroom is filtered continuously to remove particles from the air…
Edwards Coating System
Metals can be evaporated in two different ways. The second form of evaporation is electron beam evaporation. In e-beam evaporation, a high melting point filament has current…
Class 1,000 Cleanroom (Research West)
Cleanroom “Class” dictates the allowed number of particles per cubic foot of air. The cleanroom is also kept at elevated pressure to ensure that particles are swept out of the working…
Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope
A stream of electron is emitted from a tungsten filament in the top of the scanning electron microscope. This stream is accelerated due to potential…
Atomic Force Microscope
An AFM is a method of measuring surface topography on a scale of angstroms to 100 microns. This technique uses a probe or tip on the nanometer scale to raster across…
Furnace
Oxygen gas flows into the gas tube and the temperature is increased to 800°C – 1100°C. The increased temperature increases thermal motion. Oxygen atoms diffuses into the wafer and react with…
Cooke Thermal Evaporator
The process of evaporation starts with metals in a solid state. These source metals are heated in a tungsten crucible to a liquid state and then to a gaseous state.
Alpha Step Profilometer
The stylus on the profilometer scans across the sample surface in the x-direction. As it moves across the surface the stylus moves up and down tracking surface features.
Ladd Sputtering Tool
High energy ions are accelerated into a solid target causing atoms to break free from the target surface and be deposited on the sample. This is a momentum transfer operation…
Reactive Ion Etch
The sample holder is electrically isolated from the rest of the chamber which is held at ground. The platter has an RF voltage applied produces an oscillating electric field to ionize gas in the chamber.
Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition System
A gas or vapor precursor is transformed into solids such as thin films, powders, or various structured materials inside a reactor.
Sputter Coater
Under vacuum, argon gas is flowed into the chamber where it is ignited into a plasma. The target is grounded and is referred to as the cathode. A high density of positively charged argon ions…
Optical Microscope
Light reflects off the surface of the sample, allowing an optical image to be obtained through a series of lenses. An interchangeable objective lens allows the magnification of the microscope to be altered.
Sputtering Tool
Sputtering is good for depositing many film coatings. It is particularly good for depositing films, including alloys and dielectrics, that cannot be evaporated since it does not require…
Profilometer
Profilometers can be used to measure features on the scale of 10’s of nm to the µm level. They are particularly useful for measuring film roughness, film thickness, and thin film stresses.
Ellipsometer
Ellipsometry is based on the measurement of the light polarization change upon reflection from a sample surface or interface. This very sensitive measurement technique provides…