OTHER ELECTRONICS &
NANOTECHNOLOGY
UPDATE
September 2009
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dais Analytic Expands Nanotechnology in Florida
U of Minnesota Announces Plan for New Cleanroom
Senate Approves Funding for Nanomanufacturing R&D at UMass Lowell
UWSP Picked for Research Center
M+W Zander Received Equipment Order from Belarus Chip Firm
M+W Zander to Build Batteries in Finland
M + W Zander Builds Semiconductor Factory for ANGSTREM-T in Russia
EUMINAfab is Open for Business and Science
Northwest to Dedicate New Center for Nanoscience
Bristol University’s Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information has Opened
New Cleanroom to Push Boundaries of Computer Memory Technology
Dais Analytic is expected to expand their Odessa based business and bring jobs to the Tampa Bay region according to their publicist. Because of a new $200 million international trade agreement, which is with China, the Pasco Economic Development Council will partner with Dais Analytic that could bring more than a 1000 new jobs.
Dais says it expects to become one of the world leaders in applied nanotechnology materials with a focus on large energy and water industries.
On September 11, the University of Minnesota, Board of Regents reviewed a $242 million plan for new building projects throughout the university. The plan included an $80 million nanotechnology building that would include the university’s physics program as well as a 5,000 square-foot cleanroom.
The board will vote on the plan next month. If it is approved, it will be forwarded to the state legislature.
The Senate defense appropriations committee approved $4 million for nanomanufacturing research and development at UMass Lowell. The university has already received $2 million earlier this year from the government.
The funding would support research that is aimed towards producing sensors to detect biological and chemical agents in military environments and identify structural damage in vehicles such as helicopters. The funding is also helping build a new Emerging Technology and Innovation Center. Construction on the center is slated to begin in the spring.
The bill must be approved by both chambers of Congress and the President before the funding becomes law.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has been chosen as one of seven UW campuses that will house new research centers designed to create relationships with small companies to stimulate business and develop new technologies.
The seven Emerging Technology Centers would cost $7.7 million to get running in four years but pay huge economic dividends in the long run, according to the report issued by a task force appointed by UW System President Kevin Reilly. The group, appointed in February, was to study how to more successfully turn university research into economic development.
The center at UWSP would use the university's relationship with the Argonne National Lab, a world-class research center in Chicago, and Makel Engineering Inc. in California to research nanowire applications and manufacturing for the electronics, energy and automobile industries, according to the report.
Reilly and task force leader Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, outlined the recommendations to the Board of Regents during a meeting Friday at UW-Whitewater.
The centers -- with others at UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, UW-Parkside, UW-Stout, UW-La Crosse and UW-Green Bay -- would focus on new technologies where the campuses already have faculty expertise.
UWSP chemistry professor Michael Zach has been one of the national leaders in nanotechnology research and has a position at Argonne as well. Some of his recent work has focused on a technique that would allow almost anyone to create nanowires using simple, bench-top technology instead of million-dollar laboratories. That process would allow small startups to compete economically with giant corporations, and could expand the uses of nanowires.
Semiconductor equipment provider M+W Zander has received an order to modernize Belarus semiconductor vendor NPO Integral's manufacturing facilities.
M +W Zander will expand the facility (originated from 1991) to secure the future manufacturing of semiconductor discs (wafers) with a diameter of 200 millimeters. The installation of machinery and equipment is set for the end of 2009.
The order valued at €28 million ($35 million) includes equipment for a 200 mm .35-micron process. In addition, Zander will hook up the equipment and make it ready for production ramp-up. The modernizing process was to be completed by mid-2009.
M+W Zander receives order from European Batteries for new lithium ion cell factory in Finland.
The factory in Varkaus, Finland, will produce large lithium ion battery cells for the automotive industry, the energy sector and other industrial applications. Production is scheduled to start next year. The factory has a planned annual capacity of 300 Mwh. Volume production is scheduled to ramp up in 2010. Financial terms of the order were not communicated.
The order for M+W Zander comprises the design and construction of cleanrooms and dry rooms for highly sensitive production processes. This includes the assembly of electrodes and separators, as well as filling the cells with electrolyte. Maintaining high quality and peak performance of the batteries demands a constantly low humidity level. This is provided by high-performance adsorption dehumidification devices and special vapor-tight walls and ceiling systems as well as airlocks.
The Varkaus factory will use state-of-the-art battery technology that was developed by European Batteries in close cooperation with its US technology partner K2 Energy Solutions Inc. The two companies work closely together in developing the world’s leading high-capacity batteries.
European Batteries Oy has also an affiliate company Oy Finnish Electric Vehicle Technologies Ltd. (FEVT) who uses the lithium ion batteries in their offerings. FEVT supplies the patented battery management and control system that controls the linked battery cells, enabling them to be used as high-performance batteries in a broad range of applications.
Germany based M +W Zander FE, have started the construction of a semiconductor factory for the Russian T-ANGSTREM in Zelenograd, near Moscow. The estimated investment volume is €150 million.
To produce the 200-millimeter wafers, the new ANGSTREM-T production building consists of a clean room of around 6000 square meters. In addition, M + W Zander build a central supply building.
Coordinated by the Germany-based Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) through its 'NANOMICRO: Science, Technology, Systems' program, EUMINAfab combines scientific expertise with technological capabilities and provides top European research institutions and companies with solutions.
'Based on our extensive portfolio of miniaturization technologies, users are offered specific micro- and nano-technological solutions for their problems and development projects,' explained project leader Dr Matthias Kautt from KIT.
EUMINAfab users are able to access 36 high-tech installations at 10 institutions in 8 EU Member States so as to obtain scientific and technological expertise. Access to this information is free for users as long as they agree to allow the project to publish their research results.
The EUMINAfab partners say that both micro- and nano-technologies make it possible for new materials, effects and functionalities to emerge. Because of their uniqueness, researchers assign these two complementary disciplines a key role in innovations in several areas. Thanks to EUMINAfab, researchers and developers have access to new pathways that provide them with the means to assess and process many functional materials.
According to the project partners, users can choose from a wide range of options, including gaining access to individual machines, and testing and assessing future technologies under conditions they have selected themselves. The development of coordinated technical solutions and tailored process chains are also on the list of options. The project targets micro- and nano-structurisation, as well as thin-layer deposition (mixing thin layers into surfaces), moulding and characterization.
On 1 September, researchers and developers were invited to begin submitting project proposals through the project's website. The technical feasibility, scientific relevance and originality of the proposals will be reviewed independently; successful candidates will be granted access to EUMINAfab.
Financial support amounting to a maximum of EUR 6 million over the next three years is expected from the EU's Seventh Framework Program (FP7). These funds are to be earmarked for the use or shared operation of facilities as well as for some travel expenses.
EUMINAfab also provides know-how and confidentiality for non-public proprietary research, but users are expected to bear the costs.
The European Commission has said the funding will help European science and industry actors gain easier access to technologies for their early transfer to products, and make their competitive advantage a reality.
EUMINAfab partners include Centro Ricerche Fiat SCpA in Italy, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique in France, Fundación TEKNIKER in Spain and the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.
Years of patient waiting came to a ceremonial close Wednesday, as Northwest Missouri State University celebrated the opening of a new science building.
The groundbreaking four years ago was attended by former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, former university president Dr. Dean Hubbard, the late university president Dr. Robert Foster and the leader of a former star tenant of the incubator, Scott Deeter, CEO of Ventria Bioscience. They smiled and turned dirt with golden shovels.
Northwest's newest science degree in nanoscience will also find a home in the center. On display Wednesday was a $500,000 device used in nanoscience study, which is the study of science at the atomic and molecular level.
“The quietest building in the world”, the £11M centre is intended for tests that require virtually zero vibrations and air movements.
Built by Wilmott Dixon Construction, the building’s curved Portuguese limestone frontage displays a sequence of numbers first created in 1202 by Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci.
The centre contains an anechoic chamber, two cleanrooms and wet, optical and low-vibration laboratories. It will offer opportunities for the development of future computing, communications and health technologies, as well as advanced materials such as those used in the aerospace industry.
The atrium is configured as a ‘bucky ball’, a football-like molecular structure made from carbon atoms and named after Richard Buckminster Fuller.
The low-noise area for engineering and nano-surgery is contained in a basement, where a suite of ultra-low vibration nanoscience laboratories are anchored directly to the underlying rock stratum.
Capita Architecture’s Iain Martin, says: “The NS&QI building is a beautiful and complex building amalgamating both art and science in a harmonious composition.
“It is technically complex and has exceeded expectations by becoming “the quietest building in the world” in terms of vibration performance. For the scientists the building is beautiful for this reason alone!”
New Mountbatten Building cleanroom, University of Southampton - The University of Southampton’s Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, which opened September 9, 2009, will make it possible to manufacture high-speed and non-volatile ‘universal memory’ devices for industry within five years.
According to Dr Yoshishige Tsuchiya from the Nano Group at the University's School of Electronics & Computer Science, the Nano electromechanical systems (NEMS) available within the new clean room will make high-speed, non-volatile and low-power computer memory a reality.
"This high-speed, non-volatile and low-power NEMS memory will be suitable for pen drive devices for PCs and mobile applications and will mean that computers will warm up immediately when switched on and will have a ‘sleep’ switch to conserve energy," said Dr Tsuchiya.
Working with Professor Hiroshi Mizuta in the Nano Group, Dr Tsuchiya will combine conventional silicon technology with the NEMS concept. "In the clean room, we will have both conventional equipment and new nanofabrication facilities such as Electron Beam Lithography and Focused Ion Beam, which we will use to fabricate the new memory devices," Dr Tsuchiya added.
The academics also plan to use the new equipment to do what they call “More than Moore” and “Beyond CMOS” (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor). The former involves integrating nanoelectromechanical Systems (NEMS) into conventional electronic devices to create advanced switch, memory and sensor devices, while the latter involves working on quantum information devices based on single-electron and single-spin device technology which could realize massively-parallel information processing.
"I believe that if we adopt unique properties of well-controlled silicon nanostructures and co-integration with other emerging technologies such as NEMS, nanophotonics and nanospintronics, we can develop extremely functional information processing devices, faster than anything we could ever have imagined with just conventional technologies," Professor Mizuta said.
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