OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
UPDATE
May 2008
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
HVAC Handover on World-Class Nano Technology Research Facility
HP, Foxconn to Build Manufacturing Plant in Russia
Industrial Nanotech Has New Facility in New Jersey
DNA Sequencing and Nano-fabrication Receive Funding in Canada
Brown University Opens Nanotechnology Center
Alberta Government will Spend $30 Million to Help Pursue Nanotechnology
Micron and Intel’s Joint Venture Became Utah’s Largest Business Investment
Compal Electronics Plans New Plants in Europe's Poland and South America's Brazil
University of Waterloo Has New Quantum-Nano Center
UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute Details
Trumpf’s New Facility Ready for R&D
Technicians from Senior Hargreaves are close to completing the installation of environment and process ventilation ductwork systems at Southampton University's £55 million Mountbatten Building in Manchester. The new building will house the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC). An inter-disciplinary facility, Mountbatten is designed to meet the long term research needs of the university which is already known for its world-class laser research and development on silicon wafers.
The new facility is equipped for work in bio-electronics, nano technology, lasers and silicon fabrication. Research and engineering at the sub-atomic level demands cleanrooms with exceptional air purity and environmental control. Enclosed workstations, known as 'tools', for the sub-atomic research and engineering are located within the cleanrooms.
Within a contract worth over £1.5 million, Hargreaves has been responsible for the major air supply and extract ductwork systems. This included make-up air systems fabricated to DW144, thermal extract and stainless solvent extract ductwork from the 'tools' within the cleanrooms and general fresh air and exhaust ventilation ductwork for laboratories, seminar rooms offices and toilets.
The clean rooms are suspended between the structural floors with accessible service voids above and below. Air is drawn through grilles in the clean room floor into the floor void and rises through a room wall cavity. Here it is mixed with pre-filtered and tempered air from the make-up air system before being drawn through cooling coils into the sealed ceiling voids. It is then introduced into the cleanrooms via ceiling mounted fan assisted HEPA filters. Control systems monitor temperature, pressure and humidity to keep these factors constant.
Exhaust ductwork systems need to withstand operating negative pressures of 2000 Pascals and were therefore pressure tested to 2500 Pascals for a period of one hour. Ductwork construction is in fully flanged and heavy gauge galvanized and stainless steel. Extreme care was taken to preserve the hygienic integrity of the input air ductwork during the installation process.
Bovis Lend Lease acted as the principal contractor for the project and installed the make-up air units. Environmental and process ventilation system design was via the Glasgow office of consulting engineers CH2M Hill who were also the overall design consultants on the project. The cleanroom was built by CH2M Hill IDC Clean Rooms. Other contractors supplied the lined stainless steel ductwork for the acid and dust extract from localized processes in the building sourcing this from a manufacturer in the USA.
The new Mountbatten Building is expected to be handed over in July for the University schools to commence tool installation
Hewlett-Packard and Foxconn held a groundbreaking ceremony in St. Petersburg for the planned construction of a 32,000m² manufacturing facility for the production of HP PCs in Russia. The plant is in part of a joint venture agreement between the companies to invest $50 million in Russia.
HP intends to be a major PC customer for Foxconn at the new facility and expects to ship up to 40,000 consumer and commercial desktop PCs per month for the Russian market from the facility.
Foxconn expects that in the future the new manufacturing facility will produce goods for HP as well as other companies.
HP's presence in the Russia began almost 40 years ago with the opening of its Moscow office. Today, HP has 10 offices across the country and a research and development lab in St. Petersburg.
The new PC operation is part of HP's strategy to respond to increasing customer demand in fast-growing regions of the world. The planned St. Petersburg facility will complement a new HP-owned operation in India, as well as Foxconn facilities serving HP in the Czech Republic and Brazil.
Industrial Nanotech, Inc. , an emerging global leader in nanotechnology will supply its European, Asian, and Middle East customers from the Company's new manufacturing facility in New Brunswick, NJ and will not be opening a manufacturing facility in Europe at this time as previously announced.
Vancouver, BC - Development and commercialization of new technologies in the fields of DNA sequencing and nano-fabrication is receiving a boost from Western Economic Diversification Canada, which is providing $750,000 toward the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment and the building of a fabrication facility for nanotechnology and genetic research.
Genome British Columbia will purchase and install advanced genomic research equipment for use at two sites. The BC Cancer Agency's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre will house next generation DNA sequencing equipment, which will greatly increase the speed and accuracy of sequencing, as well as decrease the costs involved in such activities. The Networks of Centres of Excellence at UBC will house a newly built nano-fabrication clean room, along with equipment for prototyping and manufacturing microfluidic biochips.
The new equipment is expected to assist in the discovery of new enzymes that could be used in industrial processes as well as in the mining and oil and gas industries, the discovery of new classes of stem cells with direct therapeutic potential, and early detection leading to the better control of pest outbreaks in agriculture or forestry.
Hoping to advance nanotechnology, Brown University in Providence, R.I., has established a new research center, the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation.
The institute studies particles so small that they can be viewed only with an electron microscope, said Robert Hurt, the institute's director and a professor in Brown's division of engineering.
Faculty and students across several disciplines at Brown are collaborating in the process of synthesizing new nano materials. They are also coming up with new applications -- assembling nano materials into devices and structures.
Hurt also said he hopes that Brown's work can spawn more businesses and jobs in Rhode Island. One such firm, Solaris Nanosciences, of Providence, is a Brown University spin-off.
In a given semester, hundreds of Brown students are enrolled in nano-related courses, Hurt said. Brown offers nano-technology courses across various disciplines, including chemistry, physics and engineering, he said.
The Alberta government announced it will spend $30 million to help more students pursue nanotechnology.
The money is to help create 580 new undergraduate spots at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary in the emerging study of particles at a sub-micro level.
The U of A will get funding for nanotech programming for its Bachelor of Science in Engineering students. The courses are set to begin this fall. By 2013, this spending will create 380 new student spots at the EdmontonUniversity, Advanced Education Minister Doug Horner told the legislature today.
The campus already houses the federally funded National Institute for Nanotechnology. Researchers in Alberta and elsewhere are harnessing nanotech to explore medical and electronic breakthroughs, as well as advances in oilsands extraction.
The money comes out of a $130-million fund the Stelmach government announced last May to expand Alberta's nanotechnology sector. It also tapped that fund to pledge $15 million over five years in research grants for Alberta nanotech businesses.
Alberta, eager to compete for researchers and sales in a rapidly growing worldwide market for nanotechnologies, boasts about 45 companies with combined annual sales of more than $300 million, the government said.
It sits as about a $100 million investment and commitment on the part of local and county governments by way of property tax to help reimburse Micron and IM Flash for the investment that they made in the community,” Davidson says.
In exchange for all these incentives, the company committed to keeping its operations in Utah for at least 10 years, and to pay salaries that average above 200 percent of the county median wage. The company expected to create 1,850 jobs that pay an average of $50,000, or 224 percent of the county’s 2006 median wage. Over 10 years, the company is expected to pay $1.1 billion in wages to its employees.
In late 2006, IM Flash commenced what is now believed to be the fastest semiconductor ramp-up ever. It would be a $3 billion investment on the part of the parent companies. Brad Mortensen, facilities manager for the joint venture, was given instructions to assemble a construction team, including local contractors, that could have the old Micron facility up and running within 11 months. The major construction was completed in 2007, leaving the first few months of 2008 for finishing the tool installation. In the end, the factory would use 11.25 million construction hours and 225,000 cubic yards of concrete.
By April 2008, the facility was nearly at full staff, with about 1,600 jobs filled, nearly half of them in engineering. Mortensen notes that Lehi’s location allowed IM Flash to draw workers from both Salt Lake and Utah counties, Utah’s two largest population centers. According to Baglee, finding talented people for those jobs was made easier thanks to the engineering and science programs at the University of Utah, Utah State University, and Brigham Young University.
With China's investment conditions turning unattractive, Compal Electronics Inc., the world's second-largest supplier of notebook PCs, plans to set up its new plants in Europe's Poland and South America's Brazil to reduce its excessive focus in China, according to Ray Chen, the company's president.
Compal has applied for building its new plant in Brazil this year, which will initially specialize in repairing notebook PCs. Meanwhile, the firm has also set up another plant in Poland, which is scheduled to be operational in the third quarter of this year. Noteworthy is that the firm has gradually shifted production lines to its Poland plant from an existing one in the U.K. due mainly to prohibitive labor costs in the country.
Besides, suppliers of parts and components for notebook PCs noted that demand for notebook PCs from emerging countries is expected to fuel the growth of the industry, offsetting the sales decline in Europe or the U.S., which have both been heavily hurt by sub-prime-mortgage turmoil. Thus, Dell, a leading brand of notebook PCs in the world, plans to explore the Brazilian market this year, and has actively invited its Taiwanese contract suppliers to build plants there.
In fact, according to Chen, rising labor costs in China and depreciation of greenbacks have worsened the country's investment climate. Furthermore, he predicted that supply chains in China's notebook PC industry will most likely collapse because the country wants to upgrade its industries instead of merely manufacturing and assembling products for large-sized international companies. In response to the change, Compal has selected Vietnam to build its new plant since last year, which is scheduled to start mass production nearly next year.
However, Chen stressed that Compal won't totally withdraw its production lines from China, but will shift production of low-end products to the Vietnam plant as its second-largest manufacturing base in the future.
In addition to Compal, the world's other leading contract suppliers of notebook PCs, including Quanta Computer Inc. and Wistron Corporation, have all planned to switch their production focus to other countries of the world instead of China.
Making its home in the new Quantum-Nano Centre, the Nanotechnology Institute will conduct research in nano-fabrication, nano-metrology, and nano-biosystems. These cutting-edge facilities will expand research capabilities profoundly. One immediate effect will be an increased ability to work with the Institute for Quantum Computing to create the nano-scale devices behind the next information revolution.
The new Nanotechnology Institute and its laboratories will enable collaboration among Waterloo-based researchers and others drawn from academia and industry across the country and around the world.
In parallel with its research mission, the Nanotechnology Institute will be the multidisciplinary home for education, outreach, and professional development for Canadian and international scientists and engineers working in the field. The Institute will actively foster public interest as part of its endeavor to provide sound information on the impact of nanotechnology on our society.
UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute, (CNSI), is the first Los Angeles project by the New York-based architect Rafael Vinoly.. Its broad, low facade, overlooks the Court of Sciences near the southern edge of the UCLA campus. The building covers 189,000 square feet and had construction costs of $103 million.
Of the nine full-service University of California campuses, UCLA has both the smallest land area
(419 acres) and the most built square footage (24 million), making it by far the densest of the UCs.
New buildings Planned to Extend CU's Top Programs
Plans are underway for a new aerospace and energy systems building as well as a new geosciences building at CU.
According to the program plan for the aerospace and energy systems building, the 77,690-square-foot facility would be located on the corner of Colorado Avenue and Regent Drive, on the north side of the Discovery Learning Center, and would cost approximately $39.7 million. The new building would provide students with the opportunity to work more closely with the faculty and to learn experientially through new research facilities and labs.
According to the program plan for the 100,000-square-foot geosciences building, this $59.5 million facility would be on CU's East Campus.
Both projects will draw funding from a blend of sources that include state appropriated capital construction funds, donations from fund raising and campus resources, such as revenues derived from research grants. Because all the institutions of higher education are vying for a very limited amount of construction dollars, the decision of whether or not these plans will become a reality will come down to funding cuts within the legislature.
Diversified Project Management, Inc. has completed project management services for Trumpf's new 83,000-square-foot Laser Innovation & Technical Excellence (LITE) Building, a new research and manufacturing facility in Farmington, Conn.
Trumpf is one of the world's largest producers of fabricating machinery and a world market leader in lasers used for industrial production technology.
This new facility, which will be used to further develop new lasers, expand Trumpf's production of laser resonators and maintain the company's leadership in state-of-the-art laser technology, was completed at a cost of more than $20 million.
The new building features research labs, a 55,200-square-foot production hall and a 6,000 square-foot, Class 10,000 cleanroom designed for the manufacturing and testing of CO2 and solid-state laser resonators. DPM was retained by Trumpf to manage the construction of the new research and manufacturing facility, which will be staffed by approximately 120 employees.
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