Over the course of 21 weeks, the construction and testing of our working gas sensor array will take place in a series of high quality research facilities. These facilities are provided by the Nanotechnology Engineering undergraduate program for the exclusive use of its students. In addition, we also have a faculty advisor who will aid us in the completion of our project by providing expertise and guidance, as well as access to their own personal research laboratories.
Microfabrication Facility | Chemical Synthesis Lab | Analytical Facility
Microfabrication Facility
The flagship of the Nanotechnology Engineering undergraduate program is a class 10,000 clean room which serves as a fully equipped microfabrication facility. This facility serves to compliment the NE curriculum by offering its students practical experience with fabrication of micron sized features. The facility has the essential capabilities including metal sputter deposition, oxide/nitride plasma deposition, plasma and wet etching, optical lithography, film thickness measurements, and probe station for electrical device characterization.
Select list of equipment:
- Intlvac Nanochrome ® PVD system
- SÜSS MicroTec MJB4 4" mask aligner
- Trion Technology Orion III PECVD system
- Trion Technology Phantom III RIE system
- Headway Research Inc. photoresist processing station
- Signatone H-100 probe station w/ thermal isolation hood
Cost to students
Student design teams are required to cover the cost of all consumables and specialty materials/items which include: substrates, solvents, wet etch chemicals, photoresist, developers, strippers, sputtering targets and evaporation materials, and photomasks.
Chemical Synthesis Laboratory
For all wet chemical synthesis, Nanotechnology Engineering students have access to a standard chemistry laboratory equipped with fume hoods, work benches, all standard glassware, and equipment pertinent to chemical synthesis. Throughout the NE curriculum, this wet chemical laboratory is used to synthesize nanostructured materials such as metallic and semiconducting nanoparticle, polymeric nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes composites, and more.
Cost to students
Student design teams are required to supply their own chemical precursors, most consumables, any specialty glassware not available, replacements for any broken glass ware, and sample storage containers.
Analytical Facility
To compliment the microfabrication facility and chemical synthesis laboratory the Nanotechnology Engineering undergraduate program provides an analytical facility equipped with necessary microscopy and spectroscopy tools to characterize and probe nanoscale materials.
Select list of equipment:- Hitachi S-3500N Scanning electron microscope
- X'Pert Pro® X-ray powder diffractometer by PANalytical
- Olympus BX51 optical microscope
- Senterra® Raman Spectrometer by Bruker Optics
- Tensor® 27 FT-IR spectrometer by Bruker Optics
- Various UV-Vis spectrometers
Cost to students:
Students are required to cover all costs pertaining to non-standard sample preparation.