OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
September 2011
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Nanomaterials, Nanomedicine Lab Dedicated at University of New Mexico with Sandia
CVD Equipment Corporation Expands
Quest Implements New Cleanroom for Electronics
MIT Creates New Center for Graphene Devices & Systems
University Opens $Multi-Million Nanosystems Facility
MGS Mfg. Group Opens Molding Facility in Ireland
Officials from BorgWarner, a global power-train supplier, have announced the company is expanding operations at its facility in Water Valley, Miss., to fulfill a contract with a U.S. automaker for a new generation of transmission control solenoids, which are known as mini direct-acting solenoids. The expansion, which involves new equipment and the construction of a new cleanroom, is a multi-million dollar company investment and will create 67 new jobs.
This expansion marks BorgWarner’s second within a year; in 2010, the company expanded its Water Valley operations to add the mini direct-acting solenoids to its production lineup. For that expansion, BorgWarner created 120 new jobs, bringing its workforce to more than 420 workers.
Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) worked with company and local officials to help facilitate the project. The agency provided assistance for the expansion through the Momentum Mississippi Incentives program to help with the construction of the new cleanroom. Yalobusha County also contributed funding to assist with the construction of the cleanroom.
Auburn Hills, Mich.-based BorgWarner Inc. is a technology leader in highly engineered components and systems for power-train applications worldwide. Operating manufacturing and technical facilities in 59 locations in 19 countries, the company develops products to improve fuel economy, reduce emissions and enhance performance.
The following information was released by Sandia National Laboratories:
It wasn't exactly the grand opening of a research mega center, but the dedication Aug. 23 of the third floor of the University of New Mexico's Centennial Engineering Center for a lab combining nanotechnology and nanomedicine offered a start-up charm of its own. Maybe Los Alamos National Laboratory in its early days was something like this.
Clustered in a hallway on a floor of green tiles, with lights, pipes and vents visible overhead, about 50 informally dressed students and sports-jacketed faculty looked on as Sandia fellow and UNM professor Jeff Brinker, UNM School of Engineering dean Catalin Roman, UNM Cancer Center director Cheryl Willman and other administrators explained to three New Mexico state representatives, sitting in an adjacent bubble-like room, why the $2 million the state had contributed to the new facility was a good idea.
Brinker, who spearheaded the drive to create the 5,000-square-foot lab, spoke first: "I used to be content in making materials, but as my wife used to say: "Have you saved anyone's life today? What have you really done?'"
Prominently displayed on the wall was work led by Brinker, published in the most highly respected science journals. Most prominent was a paper detailing the creation by the Brinker group of pore-riddled nanospheres they termed "protocells,' capable of encapsulating and delivering unusually large amounts of cancer-destroying chemicals directly to a cancerous cell.
The protocell work, said Willman, has led to numerous calls from drug companies near Boston and in San Diego, "but we prefer to start a company in New Mexico to bring these achievement to market."
She pointed out to the legislator that, because of the Cancer Center's joint work with Brinker and Sandia, UNM is a member with three other institutions - Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - of the National Cancer Institute's Nanotechnology Alliance, which has brought millions of federal dollars into New Mexico. The nanobio-nanomedicine lab should help produce more medical breakthroughs from New Mexico, she said.
The lab contains areas to continue work on cancers and low-level pathogens, and to create and analyze new nanomaterials. "For commercial purposes, we have to demonstrate good manufacturing practices that show dosage control, purity, reproducibility and other factors in our protocells," said UNM post-doctoral student Carlee Ashley, who led development of the nanoscale medicine transporters as part of her doctoral project under Brinker's tutelage. "And we have to demonstrate removal of toxins that can contaminate our work, before applying to the [Food and Drug Administration] for human trials."
Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory operated and managed by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.
CVD Equipment Corporation announced that it has signed a contract to purchase a 120,000 square foot facility in Central Islip, NY to expand its Engineering, Manufacturing, Administrative and Application Laboratory. The new facility is located approximately 15 minutes from CVD s existing Ronkonkoma facilities. The Company s two (2) buildings in Ronkonkoma, NY, which total 63,275 square feet, are being offered for sale.
Leonard Rosenbaum, President of CVD Equipment Corporation, stated, The virtual doubling of the size of our Long Island facilities allows us to increase staff and capabilities in multiple product areas. The planned expansion includes First Nano R&D equipment, CVD Production equipment and, through our Application Laboratory, process development and material manufacturing programs which will advance the state of the art in 1D, 2D and 3D Nanotechnology beyond the traditional limits of the chemical vapor deposition field. With this expansion, we will further accelerate the commercialization of tomorrow's technology and further our Sustainable Growth with Low Risk business strategy.
About CVD Equipment Corporation: CVD Equipment Corporation is a designer and manufacturer of custom and standard state-of-the-art equipment used in the development, design and manufacture of advanced electronic components, materials and coatings for research and industrial applications. CVD offers a broad range of chemical vapor deposition, gas control, and other equipment that is used by customers to research, design and manufacture semiconductors, solar cells, graphene, carbon nanotubes, nanowires, LEDs, MEMS, smart glass coatings, battery and/or ultra capacitor materials, medical coatings, industrial coatings and equipment for surface mounting of components onto printed circuit boards.
The University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering has apparently begun work on a new building.
The school said it plans to build as many as three buildings, starting with a 191,000-square-foot facility that would have a 25,000-square-foot cleanroom inside.
A second phase with two new mixed-use buildings totaling 300,000 square feet of space allows the new buildings to become part of the original Albany NanoTech campus.
The NanoCollege, which hosts companies like IBM and the international computer chip consortium Sematech, currently has about 800,000 square feet of space spread through four main buildings and several cleanrooms where computer chip research is conducted around the clock. More than 2,500 people work at the facility.
Although college officials have said its northward expansion would be used for growing biotech and clean energy programs, it's unclear exactly how the buildings will be funded.
A Times Union analysis done last year estimated that the ultimate price tag for the expansion could top $300 million, although the school used private financing when it built its most recent structure, NanoFab East.
The school's facilities are actually owned by a nonprofit group called Fuller Road Management Corp. that gives the school flexibility in attracting private financing and bringing in commercial tenants. To finance its last project, Fuller Road Management issued bonds on Wall Street.
Last year, Empire State Development Corp. approved $3.1 million in funding for the NanoCollege's Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnology, one of just six so-called Centers of Excellence in the state that receive state funding to keep the state a leader in their research specialties.
According to board documents from ESDC's Oct. 21, 2010, meeting, the money was earmarked for Phase II of the NanoCollege's expansion into bio-science and clean energy research. A document listed on the SUNY Research Foundation website says that $2.3 million was earmarked for what's called the Center of Excellence in Nanomedicine and Clean Energy.
Global IT solutions and supply chain services organization Quest International has implemented a Class 6, HEPA-filtered cleanroom and workstation providing laminar flow air to Class 5 in accordance with ISO 14644 and ANSI/ESD S20.20-2007 Standard. The cleanroom will be used to provide a cleaner environment for critical processes in the manufacturing and repair of delicate electronic equipment and devices including LCD display panels, touch screen integration, optics, as well as manufacturing and repair of sub-assemblies.
"In synch with Quest's goal of continuous improvement, the cleanroom implementation is aimed at providing the highest quality manufacturing, repair and integration services for delicate electronic equipment and devices, where extreme attention must be made to an immaculate environment," said Shawn Arshadi, president and CEO of Quest International. "The cleanroom is part of our ongoing commitment to providing exceptionally high standards of product design and services."
Graphene, a form of pure carbon arranged in an hexagonal lattice just one atom thick, has generated great excitement among researchers worldwide for its unique properties that stand to revolutionize materials science and electronics. Until recently, most studies have focused on the basic physical properties of graphene. Work at the new Center will go beyond this research, exploring advanced technologies and strategies that will lead to graphene-based materials, devices and systems for a variety of applications, including graphene-enabled systems for energy generation, smart fabrics and materials, radio-frequency communications, and sensing, to name a few.
This Center benefits from very close collaboration with industrial partners. According to Michael Strano, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and co-director of the Center, "This academic-industrial partnership is essential to the advancement of both fundamental graphene science, and of emerging technological applications. One of the main goals of the Center is to create an environment that fosters this collaboration."
The Center coordinates the work of the more than 15 MIT research groups working on graphene, and leverages several existing collaborative efforts in graphene science that currently exist on campus, including a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant (MURI) from the Office of Naval Research with Harvard and Boston University, as well as a regular Boston-Area CarbOn Nanoscience (BACON) Meeting.
The kick-off meeting of the MIT/MTL Center for Graphene Devices and Systems was held at MIT on July 28th, 2011 with important participation from industry and government agencies.
The new center will bring together experts in physics, optics, chemistry, biomedicine and bioengineering to expand the research and technology commercialization of fuel cells, biosensors and other high-tech devices important to industry, medicine, national security, and the economy.
The Integrated Nanosystems Center consists of a 1,000 square-foot metrology (measurement) facility and a 2,000 square-foot, cleanroom fabrication facility. The cleanroom lab was designed and equipped in a way that ensures it is virtually free of dust, foreign particles, and chemical vapors. Congresswoman Slaughter secured a total of $4.4 million in federal money across three funding cycles to make the project possible.
"I am very pleased to be back at UR today to see the results of the work we started in 2007. Back then the University approached me with the dream of having a state-of-the-art cleanroom and lab that would allow them to train the next generation of scientists and engineers in nanotechnology and contribute immediately to our knowledge in this important area," said Slaughter. "I'm particularly excited because I know that this lab will create jobs, not only in the lab itself, but also in new companies catalyzed by the research taking place in the lab."
Nanotechnology is important to a wide range of fields, including the development of energy systems and bio-sensors. Advanced fuel cell and battery designs, which promise greater portability and less frequent recharging, can be applied to mobile communications, GPS systems, computers, and night vision devices. Biosensors with embedded nanosystem components can be used to detect biological warfare agents, such as anthrax, at very low concentrations.
"URnano will complement nanotechnology research at other New York State universities, such as Albany, Cornell, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute," said Nicholas Bigelow, the Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Physics, department chair, and Director of URnano. "The nanosystem programs at the University of Rochester are unique because they allow for the production of high temperature nanomaterials and incorporate the University's expertise in optics and optical device technology."
URnano is part of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Rochester.
U.S. nuclear scientists find silver lining in economic downturn — lower construction costs.
Given the tough economic times, good news was the last thing that nuclear scientists expected at an 18–20 August meeting for potential users of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a planned national facility for nuclear physicists, which will be run under the auspices of the US Department of Energy (DOE). Instead, they heard that the downturn may have an upside: construction of the US$614.5-million facility, originally slated to begin in 2013, could be brought forward a year. Cash-strapped Michigan State University in East Lansing, where FRIB is based, has decided to pump in money while construction costs remain low.
FRIB, expected to serve around 800 users a year, will accelerate ionized atoms down a 500-metre-long series of tunnels folded around like a paper clip and then shatter them against a graphite target to produce beams of rare isotopes at higher intensity than at any other facility in the world. The fragments could include thousands of isotopes that are predicted but have never been seen on Earth.
US nuclear scientists have dreamt of such a facility since the late 1980s, hoping that studying the lifetimes, masses, excited states and structure of rare isotopes might shed light on fundamental questions in nuclear physics and astrophysics. A report from the National Academy of Sciences endorsed the idea in 2007, and in 2009 the DOE's Office of Science signed a cooperative agreement with Michigan State University to build the accelerator by 2020, with a $520-million commitment from the DOE and another $94.5 million from the university.
The proposal to accelerate construction and be ready to begin doing science as early as 2018 is largely the brainchild of physicist and FRIB's project manager Thomas Glasmacher, who says that while thinking of ways to protect the project he came up with the idea of locking in construction costs at low prices. "It's a really good time to build things," says Glasmacher. "People are out of work and that's driving prices down." Calculating that once the US economy rebounded, construction costs would rise fast, he pitched the case to the university. In February the university president agreed, even though a Michigan state budget proposed the same month would cut $69 million in state support for the university. Glasmacher notes that he didn't ask for any extra money. The university will simply allocate $15 million of the promised budget a year earlier than planned. The next challenge for Glasmacher will be persuading the DOE to agree to the accelerated schedule, which he will propose at a peer-review meeting later this month.
Moving FRIB ahead would help remedy the loss of the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which the DOE has announced it will stop funding, a move to save $10.3 million per year. "The Holifield community supports FRIB," says Witold Nazarewicz, scientific director of the Holifield facility. Aprahamian adds that speeding up FRIB will also enable US nuclear science to compete sooner with facilities already running or planned overseas. The higher intensity of FRIB's beams should enable experimentalists to get reliable statistics on hundreds of isotopes at once, compared with a handful at other facilities.
FRIB is not the only science facility to have leveraged low construction costs. "We were fortunate to have negotiated our major contracts at a time when the construction industry was hit hard by the economic downturn," says Steve Dierker, director of the $912-million National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, a future source of high-energy X-rays that is around 60 percent complete.
However, FRIB's director, Konrad Gelbke, cautions that the whole project still depends on the availability of funding through Congress, and on clearing multiple hurdles at the DOE. A statement from the Office of Science says that a review is scheduled for the spring of 2012 to assess FRIB's readiness to start construction, and that if the review is favorable, the DOE will consider approving construction. "DOE appreciates the continuing willingness of Michigan State University to be flexible in apportioning its part of the cost-share," the statement says.
Glasmacher is confident that his approach is the right one and that the DOE reviewers will see that. "We're presenting it as an opportunity, because the quicker you do a project the cheaper it is," he says.
MGS Mfg. Group expanded its manufacturing scope by opening a new location in Leixlip, Ireland. Formally named MGS Mfg. Group, Ltd., the facility is the fifth MGS production molding plant and the company’s first outside of North America.
MGS Mfg. Group, Ltd. will manufacture products for the computer/electronics market, along with healthcare and consumer products. The 45,000+ square feet of manufacturing facility, part of the HP Technology Campus, will house a projected 24 electric injection molding machines, ranging from 100 to 350 tons. Plans include the construction of an ISO Class 8 Cleanroom for molding and assembly operations.
MGS plans an on-site tool shop to support production mold preventive maintenance, repairs, engineering changes and the inspection of incoming transfer molds. This service will also be offered to area OEMs to provide maintenance repairs of molds they run in-house. The Ireland facility will provide multishot (multiple material) molding services through use of MGS Universal Multishot Systems™ equipment line.
Planned value-added operations include sonic welding, decorating along with manual and automated assemblies. Production molding began in mid June of this year. Procedures and systems are being implemented to qualify MGS Mfg. Group, Ltd. for ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485 certification in the fourth quarter of 2011. Facility General Manager Michael Cummins states, “We are focusing our staffing strategies and equipment investments to support the objectives of our current and future customer base in Ireland. We will be exhibiting at October’s MEDTEC event in Cork where we will have the opportunity to introduce our services and capabilities to our country’s medical OEM’s.”
The MGS Mfg. Group, headquartered in Germantown, Wisconsin, is a provider of engineered manufacturing solutions for the plastics industry. The company offers design, mold making, injection molding, value-added operations, specialty equipment, and automation technologies. The molding facility in Ireland contributes to the global reach of MGS, with existing facilities in Milwaukee, Chicago and Chihuahua. MGS recently opened an engineering sales office in Shenzhen, China.
McIlvaine Company
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