Lord Broers, former President of The Royal Academy of Engineering, officially opened the new James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at Glasgow University yesterday.

The new facility within Glasgow University, centred on the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, will be the focus of interdisciplinary research at the nanometre scale and brings together many different research groups working in engineering and the physical and life sciences.

The Centre has comprehensive micro and nanofabrication facilities housed within 750m² of cleanroom space including one of the most advanced large area high resolution electron beam lithography tools in the world. Glasgow University has been engaged in micro and nanofabrication for more than thirty years and has a wealth of accumulated expertise in core fabrication technologies.

The range of fabrication equipment that this facility houses is amongst the widest to be found in a UK university and allows users to make complex devices ranging in size from microns down to nanometres. 

To do this sort of fabrication state-of-the-art tools are used to perform large area electron beam lithography (capable of writing patterns with a 4 nm spot size); metal and dielectric sputtering using RF and DC magnetrons; electron beam and thermal metal evaporation; mask aligning (with double sided capability); flip-chip bonding; nano-scale embossing; high resolution scanning electron microscopy; atomic force microscopy; surface profilometry; plasma deposition; and reactive ion etching.

The Centre promotes external access through research collaboration and, on a purely commercial basis, through Kelvin Nanotechnology Ltd.

The Centre brings together many researchers through an interactive web based user interface, weekly JWNC user meetings and equipment training courses, giving users the opportunity to develop new processing techniques, allowing them to turn interesting ideas into reality, pushing forward the frontiers of research and technology.

See film of the new facility using this link:
mms://commsvs1.cent.gla.ac.uk/media/nano fab.wmv

Source: http://www.gla.ac.uk:443/newsdesk/pressreleases/stories.cfm?PRID=4037

Story posted: 23rd March 2007.