Clean rooms

As part of a multimillion pound investment, we now have state of the art clean room facilities in the Harrison and Physics buildings.

Clean rooms: Physics

The Alex Savchenko Centre for Nanoscience is a purpose built semiconductor type cleanroom with advanced air-condition control of temperature and humidity throughout the working areas. Incoming air is filtered to provide ISO Class 5 and 6 working environments. An acid bench with an integrated DI water system and two solvent benches, all with their own Class 5 laminar air flow systems are built into the facility to complement the fabrication process.

At the heart of the cleanroom is a state-of-the-art 30kV to 100kV dedicated electron beam lithography tool capable of producing 10nm lines (±15%) across a 250um Field using a 2nA Beam. Each of the fields can be accurately positioned and joined together using a 195mm x 195mm precision stage controlled by a 0.31nm (l/2048) laser interferometer system. It has a 20bit, 55Mhz pattern generator with 1nm resolution (beam-step) at a 1mm field size. The system is capable of directly writing on a variety of samples ranging from 5mm to 150mm square, including optical mask plates.

Additional equipment, such as a fan oven, optical microscopes, K&S wire bonding systems, room temperature wafer probe station, KLA surface profiler and a LoadPoint water dicing saw have been purchased, to make this, as much as possible, a self-contained installation.

A cryo-pumped electron beam evaporation tool, a turbo-pumped thermal evaporator and an RI Etching system incorporating an ICP head are also available within the centre.

As part of the facility a dedicated optical lithography area is now available, containing a Laurell spinner, wet bench and the following optical lithographic tools:

Durham Magneto Optics Microwriter ML Laser writer capable of handling 200mm substrates and utilising three 405nm lasers with nominal beam widths of 0.6µm,1.0µm and 5.0µm. Maximum write speeds are of the order of 16mm²/ minute using the 5µm laser.

Karl Suss MJB4 optical lithography system with wafer and substrate handling up to 100mm and Soft, Hard and Vacuum contact exposure modes using up to 5" mask plates.

Availability

This facility is a research facility primarily for use by 4th year students, PhD students and post-doctoral students. If a project you are working on requires work in the Clean Room, please contact Mark Heath who will be able to assist you.

Access

Swipe card access

Swipe card access to the Physics ground floor clean room is restricted to users who have completed induction and Health and Safety awareness training sessions. University cards will be enabled once the initial training is complete.

Booking system

Training on specific equipment can be organised once clean room induction processes have been completed.

The cleanroom utilises a booking system which allows users to reserve time on cleanroom facilities on-line. Users are sent a link inviting them to join the specific user group after completion of their training. This enables them to then start booking time on the equipment.

Induction and training

Please contact Mark Heath to arrange induction and equipment training.

Further information

For further information about this facility, please contact Mark Heath or view the Clean Room on a Virtual Tour.

Clean Room: Deposition suite (Harrison)

We have a large clean room which provides a clean environment for sample preparation and houses our deposition and thermal processing equipment.

Deposition equipment

Nordiko 2000 sputtering machine

The Nordiko 2000 sputtering system is a fully automated, computer controlled, multi magnetron sputtering machine, with 4 x 6” targets with RF and DC plus reactive sputtering capabilities. The system has four upwardly facing 15cm diameter circular planar magnetrons. All the targets are water cooled; three of the targets may be supplied with 2kW of DC power and the other with up to 500W of auto-tuning RF power for the sputtering of insulating materials. The water cooled substrate table can be rotated at various speeds and distances above the targets and may also be RF biased to induce back-sputtering. The system has three independent gas lines and an adjustable throttle valve backed by a cryo-pump resulting in a wide range of pressures and flow rates being achievable. The machine is fully microprocessor controlled so that codes can be written to produce films on automatic sequence without operator involvement. All machine settings are internally monitored so that the resultant films are consistently reproduced

Bespoke magnetron sputtering system

Incorporates 3 x 2” targets pulsed DC and DC supplies plus reactive sputtering.

Edwards coating system

Evaporation or physical vapour deposition, involves heating the source material until it vaporises. The vapour escapes from the source and condenses onto whatever surfaces are in its path. By positioning the work pieces or substrates, at appropriate places in relation to the source they are coated with thin layers of the source material. The source material is heated resistively, using a filament.

Thermal processing

Instron SFL high temperature tube furnace

Anneals up to 1000 deg, vacuum system attached with gas inlet system

Four point probes

Lucas labs 302 resistivity stand

Measures sheet resistivity of flat surface

Raman

Xplora Raman system with AIST-NT TERS

Techniques based on infrared absorption or Raman scattering provides chemical information - namely composition and structure, tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) gives the possibility to perform spectroscopic imaging with sub-diffraction spatial resolution (<50 nm) by scanning the local 'hot spot' at the end of the tip across the sample surface.

Availability

This facility is a research facility primarily for use by 3rd and 4th year undergraduate students, PhD and post-doctoral researchers. Your supervisor will advise you If a project requires you to work in the Clean Room in which case you will need to contact Lesley Wears for access and training.

Further information

For further information about this facility, please contact imagingsuite@exeter.ac.uk.