According to the News Service of the INIC, this institute seeks to develop cutting-edge research programs in various fields of nanotechnology, produce the related technical know-how and boost technology diffusion toward domestic industries.

As its subsidiary objectives, the IUST's research center seeks to bring together and align all the research works of the university and provide opportunities for cooperation as well as supporting the establishment of knowledge-based companies.

The research institute has a great deal of laboratory equipment, synthesis and analysis devices to be specific, like 'melting and flash freezing advanced measuring systems', 'different furnaces with variable atmospheres', 'high precision hysteresis curve recorders' and 'optical measurement systems'.

Ali Beitollahi, the director of the IUST's research institute on nanotechnology, underscored technology development and laying grounds for establishment of knowledge-based companies as the sought-after goals of the institute in his welcome speech during the opening ceremony.

UW Opens New Ventures Facility

The University of Washington Center for Commercialization (better known as C4C) unveiled its on-campus tech startup incubator, the New Ventures Facility, in Fluke Hall.

The third floor of the building has been redesigned to provide office space for startup companies, and the second floor has wet and dry lab space where new innovations can be developed.

The idea is for the UW to double the number of startups produced there, from 10 per year to 20 per year within three years.

During the dedication, Linden Rhoads, the UW vice provost for commercialization, emphasized how helpful it would be for startups to have access to the university’s facilities, technology and intellectual capital, while having their own space to work and meet with potential investors and members of the business community.

UW President Michael Young emphasized the necessary connection between the business community and potential startups.

“What we do in labs … is designed to make the world a better place,” he said. “But if it doesn’t get out of the university, it doesn’t accomplish its mission.”

UW already had a startup focus at C4C, but the new space provides a dedicated place for new companies to work on product development and design without leaving campus.

Vikram Jandhyala and his partner, Stephen Cathcart, have already moved in.

Jandhyala is the director of the university’s Applied Computational Engineering Lab and the brains behind the 2006 startup, Nimbic, a software program that provides a testable model of new machinery for businesses, like semiconductor companies, so they can see if a new design will work before spending the money to build it.

He and his partner, Cathcart, are working on a two-pronged startup called VIxim that would encrypt critical data to protect it from security threats associated with cloud-based computing. The service would allow companies that deal with personal and sensitive data, such as finance and medical companies, to use the power of the cloud without putting that data at risk, Jandhyala said.

The other part of his company, WaveSearch, would also make use of cloud computing to connect people who have questions to others who have the answers they need.

Jandhyala and Cathcart will have an office at Fluke Hall where they can write grants and look for funding, while continuing to work on the product.

Jandhyala said all of his contacts for Nimbic came through C4C, and that he hopes in the next year, he and Cathcart can use the funds they’ve already raised to focus on creating the new product.

The new space can initially host 15 companies and, when it’s finished, will have space for 25.

Three of those spaces are already being used – by VIxim, Nexgenia (a polymer-based nanotechnology company), and Envitrum (a company that processes waste glass into green building materials).

New Machines for Aixtron R&D Centers

Aixtron SE has chosen CS Clean Systems dry bed scrubbers for its new R&D centers. In total, 11 CLEANSORB CS200SC models are to be installed at the Aixtron R&D Centre in Dornkaul, Aachen, Germany, as well as at the new training facility in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) in China. The Suzhou training centre is a joint venture between Aixtron and the prestigious Suzhou Institute of Nanotech and Nanobionics (SINANO).

When up-and-running, the CLEANSORB dry bed absorbers will be serviced directly from the CS CLEAN SYSTEMS China office based in Shanghai.

The gases and liquid organometallic precursors used in the MOVPE growth and etching of III-V epitaxial structures are critical in terms their toxic, pyrophoric, and corrosive natures. CLEANSORB dry chemisorber technology does not use activated carbon or other combustible materials. Hazardous gases are converted to stable solid by-products by dry chemical reaction at room temperature without the requirement for heating or the generation of contaminated waste water.

The hermetically sealed CLEANSORB absorber column design ensures that the MOCVD user never comes into contact with toxic MOCVD by-products. At the end of their absorbing lifetimes, CLEANSORB columns are returned to the local CS CLEAN SYSTEMS service partner for service. After refurbishment and refilling with fresh chemisorber, the absorber column is then shipped back to the customer for further use.

CRC Completes University Projects

Clean Room Construction (CRC) says it completed a record number of university design and build projects in 2011.

“Cleanrooms are a vital component of research-driven high technology sites and we are delighted to have reinforced our position in this critical area by providing solutions and ongoing technical support for the work of the top research scientists and clinical academics,” said CRC director Steve Lawton.

Projects at Cambridge, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Leeds and Newcastle universities in the UK included a cyclotron cleanroom turnkey project, a state-of-the-art PET biomedical imaging centre extension and new cleanrooms to facilitate an electron beam lithography system.

This latter project at the Nano Technology Centre located on the West Cambridge Site on behalf of Cambridge University involved CRC building a purpose-built laboratory for a new electron microscope.

CRC was briefed to design, install and validate a new laboratory area to achieve tight ambient control of 21 +/- 0.5°C or better in conjunction with anti vibration measures, RF shielding and minimal air turbulence as this would all have an adverse effect on the operation of the microscope.

The presence of SF6 gas was also viewed as a hazard, which meant that CRC had to install a gas detection and extraction system as part of the solution along with other process utilities to service the requirements of the new microscope.

CRC’s project director Richard Rowe said: “Having been involved in the design and build of the university’s original Nano Technology Centre, CRC was delighted to be involved again in this latest chapter of development in the field of nanotechnology.”

Wheeling High School Introduces Nanotechnology into Curriculum

"Nanotechnology is breaking new ground in a several fields including chemistry, biology, physics, material and environmental sciences, engineering, and medicine," said Dr. Lazaro Lopez, principal of Wheeling High School. "We are extremely pleased with NanoProfessor for providing this opportunity for our teachers and are looking forward to working with them to determine how the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program can be applied in our high school setting, with the ultimate goal of providing our students with knowledge and experience in nanotechnology beginning their freshman year."

The three-day NanoCamp was held at NanoInk's corporate office in Skokie, IL.

"We received an introduction to nanoscience and conducted hands-on training with NanoInk's NLP 2000, which enabled us to make structures at the nanoscale on a desktop system, something that is usually only able to be done in a multi-million dollar cleanroom," said Frank Caballero. "We are very excited to take what we've learned back to the classroom. Exposure to these advances in science will interest students pursuing careers in medicine, scientific research, engineering, and others."

"We are honored to have Wheeling High School, a recognized leader in high school science education, interested in working with NanoProfessor to define how the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program can be implemented throughout a high school science curriculum," said Dean Hart, chief commercial officer at NanoInk. "As nano-based products continue to emerge in the marketplace, the demand for nano savvy employees will rise. Progressive schools like Wheeling and visionary leaders like Dr. Lazaro Lopez are going to help meet that workforce demand by preparing their students for exciting careers in the growing nanotechnology industry."

The NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program aims to expand hands-on nanotechnology education from the cleanrooms of research-based universities to undergraduate classrooms. The program alternates between classroom lectures and hands-on lab work and includes a textbook authored by leading nanotechnology experts, covering the topics of Nanotechnology Basics, Nanophysics, Nanochemistry, Nanobiology, and Environmental, Health, & Safety perspectives on nanotechnology.

In conducting the hands-on lab experiments, students learn the fundamentals for building custom- engineered nanoscale structures while working with state-of-the-art equipment including NanoInk's NLP 2000 Desktop NanoFabrication System, a student-friendly atomic force microscope (AFM), a best-of-class fluorescence microscope, an advanced nanoparticle characterization instrument, and various chemical and biological materials used today within current and emerging nanotechnology applications.

Wheeling High School is a public, four-year comprehensive high school with a STEM focus that opened in 1964 and graduated its first class in 1966. It serves Wheeling and sections of Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Mount Prospect, Northbrook, and Prospect Heights and is one of the six schools in Township High School District 214. In the fall of 2010, Wheeling High School was officially rededicated as a STEM school and admitted as an institutional member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science, and Technology — one of only three in Illinois. More information is available at: whs.d214.org.

CNSE's STC Provides Training for First Cleanroom Operator Class

Twelve students completed the two-week Cleanroom Operator Training Program, a partnership between CNSE's STC and Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC). The course was developed in collaboration with Moser Baer Technologies, which is designing and installing a manufacturing pilot line for organic light emitting diode (OLED) lighting panels as part of a $17 million investment at CNSE's STC that will create more than 50 high-tech jobs by 2013.

Following the cleanroom training at CNSE's STC, graduation ceremonies and a job fair were held at FLCC's Victor Campus Center, where students had a chance to discuss career opportunities with CNSE's STC, Moser Baer Technologies and other high-tech employers, including optics and medical companies from Western New York.

This first-of-its-kind course prepared students for entry-level work in high-tech research, development and manufacturing cleanroom facilities, which require environments free of pollutants to produce precision components used in consumer products such as smart phones, laptops and televisions, as well as medical devices, LEDs, and weaponry and protective gear for the military.

CNSE's STC and FLCC have already begun the planning process for another cleanroom operator training program in the spring.

Singh Center Begins to Take Shape

The Gilbane Building Company, based in Rhode Island, is managing the construction of the $91 million facility, designed by Weiss/Manfredi architects of New York. The building will feature steel and glass exterior walls encompassing 78,000 square feet of microscopy laboratories, optics labs, and a 10,000-square-foot, environmentally controlled clean room. Labs in the L-shaped building will sit around an open quad, and it will also feature conference rooms, a public galleria, and a forum with views of campus and the city. Penn alumnus and University Trustee Krishna Singh provided a $20 million naming gift for the building.

The ground-breaking for the Singh Center occurred about a year ago. Now, with the steel frame in place, it is becoming easier to envision the building that will combine the resources of the School of Engineering and Applied Science with those of the School of Arts & Sciences.

“It is gratifying to watch the rapid progress of the Singh Center’s construction,” says Eduardo Glandt, dean of Penn Engineering. “Each step forward brings our researchers and students that much closer to accessing state-of-the-art facilities and the deep potential of nanotechnology.”

The building is expected to be not only a regional leader in nanotech, but also an exemplar of environmentally aware construction. Builders are targeting LEED Silver certification with eco-conscious practices such as diverting construction waste from landfills, installing a green roof, and optimizing energy efficiency in the finished structure. The project has a projected spring 2013 completion date.

Kentucky Manufacturing Facility

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has announced that a new manufacturing operation will open in Nicholasville, Kentucky, creating 94 jobs.

Beshear said that the plant operated by SMC LLC will be located in a 22,500-square-foot building that used to house Custom Wiring. Workers at the plant will manufacture circuit board assemblies and perform systems integration for the electronics industry.

He said the company has already begun to operate and plans to be at full capacity by early next year.

Xilinx India Plans R&D Expansion

Xilinx, a programmable logic solutions player, is planning to expand its research and development (R&D) centre in India. "We are expected to shift to the new and bigger facility by the end of this year," said Vamsi Bopanna, site director and CTO India, Xilinx India Technology Services Pvt. Ltd.

Located at Hyderabad, the new 130,000 square feet R&D facility will house labs and new data centers, the company informed. "We are almost doubling our R&D capacity by moving from the current 57,000 square feet to the 130,000 square feet facility."

However, Xilinx didn't share the investment details, saying, "We are investing substantially in building infrastructure to service our needs."

Xilinx' current facility in Hyderabad is almost 57,000 square feet; and is largest R&D centre outside of the company's US headquarters. The facility plays an integral role in technology and product R&D including chip design, IP development, software, system and application development.

Out of Xilinx total 1200 engineers globally, 400 engineers are placed in the company's Hyderabad centre. Here, engineers are involved in the development of its core field programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms. They were also part of Xilinx' newest 28nm 7 series FPGA products, including the world’s highest capacity FPGA with 6.8 billion transistors (equivalent to 20M application-specific IC gates).

Xilinx Virtex 2000T has been built using 6.8 billion transistors. This capacity is made possible by the company’s Stacked Silicon Interconnect technology, "the first application of 2.5D IC stacking that gives customers twice the capacity of competing devices." It has started sampling since last quarter. While, Zynq-7000 family is the industry’s first EPP developed to achieve the levels of processing and compute performance required in high-end embedded applications targeting markets such as video surveillance, automotive driver assistance, factory automation.

AMD Opens Innovation Center

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is opening its Fusion Center of Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The center is designed to focus on the innovative developer environment and software performance advancements enabled by heterogeneous computing.

The AMD Fusion Center of Innovation will fund, mentor and promote new commercial enterprises emerging from the vast intellectual property and research expertise in the University of Illinois community. The University has been a hotbed of new startups since the creation of the first widespread web browser, Mosaic, which was developed by Marc Andreessen in 1992. Through access to AMD accelerated processing unit (APU) technology and platforms, the center will help bridge access to new AMD heterogeneous computing technology with the innovative spirit stimulated and nurtured on campus.

CSA Opens Testing, Certification Lab

Testing and certification body, Canadian Standards Association (CSA), has announced the opening of its new, state-of-the-art testing and certification laboratory in Hong Kong.

The facility is equipped with advanced technology and will provide significant localized testing capabilities for manufacturing clients including: lighting, household appliances, battery operated tools, transformers, wiring devices and other electrical products. Aside from the new Hong Kong laboratory, CSA has also opened laboratories in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"CSA is committed to helping companies in the Greater China region succeed in the global marketplace," said Ash Sahi, president and CEO, CSA Group.

"The opening of CSA's new Hong Kong lab will provide our clients with testing and certification services for a wide range of products to meet various international standards for exports to North America and globally. We are determined to continue serving our valuable Hong Kong customers with the highest integrity and quality to help them achieve business success globally," Sahi added.

Located in Shatin, the new office and laboratory facility occupies 476.5 square meters (5,129 square feet). The new location provides qualified testing and certification services for Hong Kong's manufacturers locally, helping them reduce costs, time-to-market and improve product quality. The testing and certification industry has been identified as one of the new six economic pillars in which Hong Kong has enormous potential for development. With its new local laboratory in place, CSA's long-term expertise in this arena will contribute to the healthy development of the industry while helping to strengthen the Hong Kong brand of quality worldwide.

Greater China remains a key priority market for CSA. One of the company's key business strategies includes accelerating investments in LED lighting, energy efficiency verification (EEV), solar and photovoltaic, and expanding its core services and businesses in the region.

CSA's Hong Kong laboratory is staffed by a team of experienced testing professionals trained in relevant North American and international standards to best serve its customers, the company said.

Interdisciplinary Science Building Opens

When Penn State’s Millennium Science Complex opened its doors to researchers this fall; it inaugurated a new era of scientific discovery at the intersection of materials science, engineering, nanoscience and the life sciences at Penn State.

The 297,000-square-foot research building is the culmination of 10 years of planning and more than three years of construction, making it the largest academic building on campus and one of the most complex construction projects in the University's history.

The facility is designed to the exacting standards of a world-class laboratory for imaging on the atomic level, and nanofabrication in stringent cleanroom conditions. The northern wing of the building is devoted to materials science, while the west wing of the building houses researchers in the life sciences and neural engineering. The two wings are joined on several levels to facilitate interactions between the two disciplines, and some of the instrumentation for characterization and nanofabrication is shared between the two groups in a common area of the building.

Even before some of the most advanced and specialized instruments were installed, staff scientists noticed a clear difference in the sharpness of images they were getting from instruments that were relocated from other buildings on campus. Josh Stapleton, the operations manager of the Materials Characterization Lab (MCL), an open user facility that is administered by the Materials Research Institute, saw dramatic improvements in their new ultra quiet space located in the underground laboratories of the Millenniums Science Complex.

“We had thought that this general class of instruments would work better, especially transmission electron microscopes, which are notoriously finicky,” Stapleton said. “But even with our workhorse scanning electron microscopes we have seen a big difference.” He attributes the improvement to the isolation of the labs from vibration. Each instrument lab is built on 24-inch slabs of concrete that are physically isolated from the rest of the building, so vibrations are almost completely eliminated. With future instruments that will be able to gather information at the sub-angstrom level (less that the size of a helium atom), a small vibration can cause a large distortion.

Another instrument that has shown dramatic improvements in performance is the atomic force microscope (AFM), which works by scanning a sharp tip across a sample and recording the atomic scale topography of the material. “You can see a big difference with the data there as well,” Stapleton said. “In this case I think it is a combination of acoustics and maybe temperature that has the instrument performing so much better.” The labs are equipped with radiant panel cooling to control temperature gradients from floor to ceiling and with fresh air socks that bring air in at low velocity. The walls and ceiling are covered with fabric acoustic panels, and the rooms are also shielded with metal cladding to buffer the instruments from electromagnetic interference from the massive power panels that supply electricity to the labs.

For most students, the Millennium Science Complex will be a 10-minute or less walk from any place on campus. Once they arrive, the Materials Characterization Commons provides a central location to monitor experiments on computers loaded with specialized software or to interact with experts in materials characterization.

“The student might not realize what that means,” Stapleton said, “but the benefit of having all of the staff and all of their expertise together when students are performing an experiment, instead of all spread apart, means that the quality of advice we can give goes way up. The fact that they can come to almost one hallway versus four buildings previously and interact with people who have a breath of knowledge of characterization techniques will clearly benefit their research.”

Faculty in disciplines as diverse as geoscience and biology will benefit from the MSC, Stapleton believes. The engineering of the building will get them the ultimate performance out of whichever generation of instrument they use. Beyond that, Penn State now has the capability of installing the most advanced state-of-the-art instruments, with space to grow into the 21st century.

Over the course of the next few months, the complex process of dismantling, moving and installing the multiple million-dollar instrumentation for micro- and nanofabrication will be completed. The Penn State Nanofabrication Facility, one of the 14-university-member National Nanofabrication Infrastructure Network, funded by the National Science Foundation, will relocate from Innovation Park to the first floor laboratories and cleanrooms of the Millennium Science Complex, in the process replacing some older tools and adding new ones. The new cleanroom facilities will double the space for nano- and micro-scale device fabrication, with an equal amount of mechanical space supporting the clean room on the floor below.

“The subfab is the most amazing part to me,” said David Sarge, the engineer responsible for the cleanroom’s state-of-the art construction. The cavernous space contains systems for treating vented gases, lab wastewater and used chemicals; a tunnel dedicated solely to hazardous materials transport, and all of the mechanical systems that supply low humidity air, ultraclean water and process gases to the labs one floor above. And like the Materials Characterization Laboratory, the Nanofab is an open user facility for students, industry and academia.

At the frontier where materials and life sciences begin to converge, a new science for the 21st century is emerging. Laboratories on a microchip, DNA and RNA as building blocks for nanoscale devices, multiscale modeling of living materials, artificial muscles and bioinspired energy materials are some current or near future research directions for faculty and students working in the Millennium Science Complex’s laboratories and open use facilities.

Researchers who need information about using the Materials Characterization Laboratory should contact Stapleton at 814-863-2224 or jjs366@psu.edu.

Enpirion, Partners with JiangyinChangdian for MEMS

Advanced Packaging Co., Ltd. (JCAP) for the manufacturing of silicon-based magnetics utilizing Enpirion's proprietary microelectronic magnetic silicon (MEMS) technology. Earlier in 2011, Enpirion demonstrated that its MEMS technology achieved all necessary application performance figures-of-merit at record frequencies of 18 MHz in its DC-DC power system-on-chip (PowerSoC). This announcement marks another key milestone in Enpirion's leadership and commercialization efforts using low-cost silicon-based magnetics partnering with JCAP with its specialized, high volume wafer level packaging manufacturing capabilities. JCAP is implementing and fully qualifying Enpirion's innovative magnetic material processes.

"I am happy to announce our collaboration with JCAP on the integration of Enpirion's advanced MEMS technology into JCAP's innovative wafer level manufacturing operations," said Denis Regimbal, CEO of Enpirion. "Since the company's inception, we have invested heavily in developing silicon-based magnetic technologies that complement our high frequency CMOS power technology. This will permit Enpirion to continue to extend its leadership in integrated DC-DC power solutions by penetrating into new applications such as cost-effective LDO replacements."

Lai Chih-Ming, President of JCAP said: "We are excited to have been selected by Enpirion, the leader in integrated power management, to bring to market this advanced technology for magnetic materials on silicon wafers for the first time in power applications using our world renowned, innovative, high volume wafer level bump and chip scale manufacturing processes. Clearly this next generation technology will deliver the first low cost, fully integrated DC-DC converter on silicon. We look forward to growing this business with Enpirion."

Enpirion, the leading provider of integrated power management solutions, simplifies design complexity while addressing the space constraint and efficiency needs faced by designers of enterprise, telecom, storage, industrial and embedded applications.

JiangyinChangdian Advanced Packaging Co., Ltd. (JCAP) is a subsidiary of Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. (JCET) a leading manufacturer of discrete semiconductor devices, the largest indigenous packaging subcontractor for discrete and IC packaging assembly and test in mainland China.

Hon Hai Group Kicks Off Automation Plan in Central Taiwan

Terry Gou, chairman of the Hon Hai Group, now the world's largest contract manufacturer of electronics by revenue, announced the group's grand investment of NT$100 billion in setting up fully automated production lines in Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), indicating his ambition to build the world's largest kingdom of precision automation and robotics on the island.

To facilitate its manufacturing automation plan, the group has allied seven local universities to jointly develop automation technologies, while joining hands with related companies, including Hiwin Technologies Corp., a machine tool maker, Lead Year Enterprise Co., Ltd., a switching power supplies producer, and MicroLab Precision Technology Co., Ltd., a spindle supplier, to develop new manufacturing technologies and products.

With the group poised to venture into industrial automation and robots by establishing a base of smart automation in central Taiwan, Gou stressed that his group aims not to compete against existing companies, but to play a resource coordinator and distributor in the line in the future. He continued that his group won't have its investment overlap with those by partners, considering the fact that each allied company has its own core competency.

Gou also invited Hiwin to jointly explore overseas markets in Germany, Brazil and mainland China, saying that Hiwin, which aims to challenge the world's second-largest supplier of transmission-control devices and systems in 2012, will hopefully gain more growth momentum through cooperation with his group to become the world's No.1 supplier of its kind soon.

Gou's plan to build a smart automation base in central Taiwan begun in 2011, when his group announced an investment of NT$10 billion in establishing a factory engaged in making key parts and components for automation and system integration equipment at the CTSP. The investment now has been increased to NT$100 billion to further involve the group in developments of precision automation and robots. With the grand investment, the group is expected to turn out NT$120 billion of related products annually in the next three to five years.

Despite persistent worry of the EU debt crisis, Gou also revealed several overseas investments to be launched in the short term. For example, his group intends to invest in the sector of automated agricultural instruments in Brazil, as the country possesses about 25 percent of the total effective agricultural land in the world. The huge business potential of the market, Gou said, is worth his group's efforts to explore.

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