The silicon carbide "foundry" facility has been officially opened for power electronic device development. Raytheon says its application of SiC electronic systems will place the UK in a leading position in a number of markets.

The firm's technology will be used to develop high-efficiency, smaller, low-weight power conversion products used in harsh environments across the automotive, aerospace, geothermal explorations, oil and gas, and clean energy sectors.

The Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore, who opened the foundry, says, "Today marks an important demonstration of what we can achieve in the UK through collaboration. The silicon carbide foundry is the first of its kind in the UK and represents the fusion of Raytheon's investment in UK manufacturing technology with university expertise, backed by UK Government funding from the Technology Strategy Board."

This scientific and engineering endeavor born out of Raytheon Glenrothes has placed Scotland in a unique leadership position globally, enhanced by universities across the UK.

The investment has created a team of engineering specialists working in the production of silicon carbide devices and systems designed to operate at high temperatures, specialists who will continue to shape and influence advanced manufacturing processes and technologies.

Raytheon's ability to process SiC utilizes high-temperature annealing and high-temperature or high-voltage ion implantation. The components provide unique properties in electronics: SiC has the ability to operate at higher voltages and greater temperatures than pure silicon, and at a third of the weight and volume. This improves operational performance and reduces system operating costs. Raytheon says it is the first company to have successfully tested SiC circuit devices at temperatures up to 4000C.

Bob Delorg, chief executive, Raytheon UK, says,"Raytheon's investment in the foundry coupled with support from the Technology Strategy Board exceeds £3.5 million to date. This places the company at the start of a journey to exploit new global markets for this cost-efficient material, which is estimated to bring significant new business to Raytheon in Scotland in the coming years."

He continues, “As well as employing industry-leading engineers and scientists, we have made substantial commitments to develop new engineering talent to maintain our technological edge in high temperature silicon carbide. We are supporting Ph.D. students and undergraduates, and we are giving apprentices and young graduates the opportunity to develop their careers in this new and exciting arena of next-generation semiconductor technology."

"What was previously unachievable is now possible with silicon carbide, as it allows for smaller and lighter electronics to operate in harsh environments, and addresses a real customer need for significant energy efficiency savings in the manufacture of power switching and rectifying components (AC/DC converters)."

Ian Watson, director of the aerospace, defense, security and space trade organization, ADS Scotland, adds, "Today we see Raytheon UK gearing up for future success -through investment, collaboration and diversification. At ADS, we know one of the main challenges industry faces as it looks to the future is continuing technological discovery to stay ahead of global competition."

"To address this challenge, it is vital that industry and academia work together to advance technology and fully explore commercial applications. Raytheon's new facility at Glenrothes is a brilliant example of this and shows the company to be confident not only about its own future, but also the future of the United Kingdom as a home to market leading innovation."

"This sector with companies such as Raytheon that operate in Scotland contributes billions in sales, millions in R&D and thousands in jobs. It demonstrates exactly why aerospace and defense are at the heart of the economy and why their success is crucial to our overall future economic prospects."

RLS Triples the Size of Operations

RLS, a Renishaw associate company based in Slovenia, has tripled the size of its operations with a new, 2,100 square meters (22,596 sq. ft.) custom-built facility in Komenda.

The new building, which includes a 180m2 cleanroom with electro-conductive flooring and conforming to the ISO 8 standard, represents a significant expansion to RLS’s design and manufacturing capability.

RLS has been an associate of Renishaw, a measurement, motion control, spectroscopy and precision machining specialist, since 2000, when Renishaw took a 50% shareholding.

Janez Novak, Director of RLS, said: “We are drafting further company growth based on our own products, good manufacturing capabilities and solid co-operation with Renishaw.

“In the coming period, our company is going to invest a lot of effort into our excellence in engineering and into upgrading the quality system, especially because some of our products are designed for demanding, safety-critical applications.

“Our vision is to become a leading global manufacturer of innovative linear and rotary sensors and elements.”

Sir David McMurtry, Renishaw’s Chairman and Chief Executive, added: “It has been a joy and a pleasure for me to visit RLS again and meet the staff – they are absolutely amazing. I am delighted how the company is growing, and driven by Janez, we are expecting a great future.”

RLS is a designer and manufacturer of solid-state encoders for measuring speeds and rotary or linear position in the harshest applications. Its products are used in medical equipment, gas pumps, robots, oil-field equipment, construction machinery, off-road vehicles and ‘smart’ machines of all types.

Materion Expands Facility Capabilities

Materion Barr Precision Optics and Thin Film Coatings, a Materion Corp. business, has announced the impending completion of an 18-month project that will significantly enhance its capability to manufacture and test extremely large optical interference filters and other complex optical coatings. The Large Optics Coating Facility in Westford, Mass. will produce high performance band pass filters in larger sizes than are currently available.

Delivery of the custom-designed and fabricated system was scheduled for December, with operation commissioned for the first quarter of 2013. The facility will include a high-vacuum deposition system, a metrology set to test large coated optical elements and a precision wash station to clean large optical substrates. The installation of the new equipment in a specially built cleanroom will allow the deposition and testing of interference filters.

Initial work will concentrate on extending Materion's capability to coat narrow band pass filters to 75 cm. The second phase of process development will focus on precision beam splitters up to 100 cm in diameter. Finally, Materion will develop mirrors and anti-reflection coatings for astronomical and space applications in sizes up to 140 cm diagonal/diameter. Materion will provide these coatings on any currently utilized substrate including glasses, ceramics, beryllium, composites, and crystal materials.

Materion Corp. is headquartered in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The company’s products include precious and non-precious specialty metals, inorganic chemicals and powders, specialty coatings, specialty engineered beryllium alloys, beryllium and beryllium composites, and engineered clad and plated metal systems.

SUSS MicroOptics Moves to New Facility

SUSS MicroOptics S.A., a supplier for refractive and diffractive micro-optics, has relocated to a new production facility in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The cleanroom facilities are purpose-built and were expected to be in full operation by mid-December 2012.

The facilities will give SUSS MicroOptics the flexibility to increase production capacity and, if necessary, to switch to a shift system in the future.

The know-how comprises profound experience in optical design, micro-fabrication and metrology. The company provides the highest quality components through leading edge manufacturing techniques, based on 200 mm wafer technology in Quartz and Silicon. Its innovative advances in technology make SUSS MicroOptics a market leader in its segment. This technology leadership and innovation allowed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% over last ten years.

SUSS MicroOptics is a 100% subsidiary of SÜSS MicroTec AG.

RMIT Constructing MicroNano Research Facility

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia is continuing work on its MicroNano Research Facility, which will include Class 100 (ISO Class 5) and Class 10,000 ISO Class 7) cleanrooms.

This facility within RMIT University's Melbourne city campus will support over 70 researchers and research students within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a large number of collaborating researchers within and external to RMIT University. The MNRF will be a 2,600 sq. ft. facility comprising around 800 sq. ft. of Class 100 cleanrooms, nearly 500 sq. ft. of Class 10,000 cleanrooms, and a physical containment Level 2 (PC2) laboratory.

The MNRF will house facilities for the realization of micro- and nano-devices for fundamental and applied research in biotechnology, electronics, electromagnetics, fluidics, materials science, photonics, and sensing. The facilities will include a full suite of photolithography equipment, wet processing facilities, polymer processing laboratories, thin film deposition and patterning equipment, a sensor technology laboratory, micro- and nano-metrology capabilities, and support facilities for design and packaging.

ISO 7 Certification for Flexcon

FLEXcon's cleanroom has achieved its ISO Class 7 Cleanroom certification, necessary for manufacturing for pressure-sensitive applications specifically for the consumer electronics industries.

FLEXcon's cleanroom has achieved its ISO Class 7 Cleanroom certification from Certification and Calibration Services Inc. With this certification, FLEXcon will implement a new standard of manufacturing for pressure-sensitive applications, specifically for the consumer electronics industries, which require production in a cleanroom.

Only select FLEXcon products will be manufactured in the cleanroom, which excludes 60 in. products. FLEXcon achieved certification by implementing its 24 in. cleanroom line, capable of running products that meet the ISO Class 7 cleanroom standard for dirt and debris for the intended electronics application. Quality materials are brought to FLEXcon and certified as suitable for this environment.

"This is a great new capability FLEXcon is adding to enhance our product offerings for our customers in the consumer electronics segments," says Michelle Ostiguy, director, Photovoltaic and Barrier. "The certification will allow us to provide customers with custom product constructions that are in compliance with cleanliness specifications."

The cleanroom is capable of both solvent and water based coatings that can be cured via thermoset or UV curing methods. The machinery has handling capabilities to produce product that is suitable for clean applications. Constant monitoring of the HEPA-filtered environment ensures a stable production environment.

FLEXcon is an ISO 9001:2008 certified manufacturer of pressure-sensitive films and adhesives, headquartered in Spencer, Mass.

Suntron Sells Methuen Facility

Suntron Corp., a provider of electronics manufacturing systems, has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Methuen, Mass. facility to EIT LLC, an electronics manufacturing services provider based in Sterling, Va.

"Suntron is looking forward to dedicating more resources to our high reliability customers,” says Ed Wheeler, Suntron's CEO. "We are positioned for future growth and will maintain our focus on customers requiring Class III PCBA, large scale integration, and manufacturing in cleanroom environments."

The sale will enable Suntron to better serve its customers in industries including defense, aerospace, and medical devices. Operations will continue in the existing facility, whose capabilities include Class II and Class III printed circuit board production and small box build assembly.

Suntron's defense qualifications include Nadcap, ITAR, and AS9100 certifications. In the medical device industry, Suntron is ISO 13485 certified and FDA registered and offers manufacturing facilities that meet the quality demands of the FDA’s Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) standards, defined by FDA 21 CFR Part 820 QSR.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., Suntron also operates a full service facility in Tijuana, Mexico.

NCKU, U.S. Lab Jointly Working on Nanocarbon Technology

Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and America's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), which have enjoyed close collaborative ties for years, are planning to jointly compete for an International Research-Intensive Centers for Excellence (I-RiCE) center on nanocarbon technology.

"We anticipate the first I-RiCE proposal between Taiwanese universities and ANL will be led by NCKU," said Dr. Saw W. Hla from ANL at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop on Dec. 11.

"For the I-RiCE, the faculty from both ANL and NCKU tried to put together proposals last year that weren't successful," said Hla. "So we're very optimistic in terms of the result of this workshop leading to a very successful I-RiCE proposal."

Dr. Yon-Hua Tzeng, dean of College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, NCKU, said, "This workshop is not a conventional workshop; it's more like a brainstorming workshop. The main purpose of the joint efforts is to come up with some high impact subject related to carbon technology."

Dr. Weng-Sing Hwang, vice president for Office of Research and Development, NCKU, on behalf of NCKU President Hwung-Hweng Hwung, welcomed the partners from ANL. "We're very excited that this workshop brings the colleagues from America and Taiwan around and it will further enhance our collaboration," he said.

In response, Hla said, "We're very excited about the two-day workshop and we want to thank all of you for hosting and look forward to a very productive workshop, and a very successful program which will expand the cooperation that we have with NCKU."

"The workshop is aiming at preparing a proposal to National Science Council (NSC) for establishing an international research center with 3 main themes, including carbon nanoelectronics, nanocarbon for energy devices, and nanocarbon based medical devices," said Hwang.

"The laboratory signed an MOU with the university about 4 years ago," said Hla, "and ANL as one of the U.S. Department of Energy's oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research may have more relationship with universities in Taiwan than any other countries."

"This collaborated project is critical because it will bring the scientists from the lab into the market place," according to Dr. Orlando H. Auciello.

Fraunhofer IAP Opens Pilot Line

The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP) in Potsdam-Golm and fab/cleanroom developer MBRAUN have commissioned a new "near industrial-scale" pilot line for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic solar cells.

The 15m-long pilot line, dubbed the Pilot Plant for Solution-based Processes for Organic Electronics at Fraunhofer IAP's Application Center for Innovative Polymer Technologies, was commissioned during a two-day workshop (Jan. 15-16) entitled "Solution-based Organic Electronics: From Materials to Technology."

Showing the new ability to extend of previous laboratory-scale work, part of the ceremony apparently included showing a 1:20 scale bus shelter (10cm high), designed by a joint project of IAP and design and funded by the Federal Ministry of Research. The mini-shelter is solar powered with partially transparent organic solar cells integrated into the roof and sidewall; OLEDs display the schedule or give light signals when a bus arrives. The Potsdam Fraunhofer Institute developed the OLEDs as well as the organic solar cells.

"The model shows that organic electronics has great design potential for energy-saving, intelligent lighting control and information systems," stated Armin Wedel, division director at Fraunhofer IAP. "To apply these technologies to life-size street furniture, the new pilot line now offers the possibility to realize organic electronic components under near-industrial conditions -- a crucial prerequisite for the later transfer into commercial products."

Martin Reinelt, CEO of MBRAUN, added his hope that such partnerships can "strengthen the German research landscape in order to compete successfully with American and Asian research institutions. We also want to demonstrate the performance of German plant manufacturing."

Pilot Line Reaches Completion

Phase One of a £1.1 million project to convert three empty industrial units into a pilot production facility has reached completion.

The Pilot Line Project is a joint venture between Swansea University and Tata Steel and comprises the construction of a cleanroom facility and associated office space. Phase One of the project comprising construction of the cleanroom facility, including two pilot production lines, reached completion in October 2012.

Phase Two, which includes the creation of associated office spaces and laboratories – designed to solve manufacturing challenges during production – will get underway hopefully during the first quarter of 2013.

Phase One of the project was implemented to provide SPECIFIC – an academic and industrial consortium led by Swansea University and Tata Steel – with a state-of-the-art Class 10,000 (ISO7) cleanroom facility to house two pilot production lines. The production lines will create a range of innovative coated steel and glass products, including sheet steel, glass, polymer substrate based technologies, 350mm wide coil materials, as well as other flexible and non-flexible materials.

All of the products that will come off the production lines have been designed to revolutionize the construction industry, and will help reduce CO₂ emissions, create new jobs and help to meet the UK's total target of renewable energy by 2020.

John Weaver Contractors is the main contractor on the scheme, with Greenbuild Consult is the lead consultant.

Work began on Phase One of the project in July 2012. The pilot line is housed below a steel frame, concrete mezzanine floor and surrounded by stud partitions, plasterboard walls and viewing panels.

Commenting on the construction of the cleanroom, Greenbuild Consult Company Director, Jonathan Ridd, said: “The production line is designed to create a coating on the sheet metal that can harvest electricity and produce heat which in turn will have energy saving benefits. This is a pilot scheme, but if it works in the way that it is designed to, then the next step will be to put this small scale operation into large scale production.

“During Phase One of the project we fitted out two industrial units and constructed an industrial cleanroom environment Class 10,000 (ISO7). The project has a large electrical distribution board and this has been included to facilitate the required amount of incoming supply that is being brought into the building in order to run the pilot production line.

“One of the main aspects of the work was completing the mechanical installation works on the cleanroom which were very important and a large part of the first phase. We employed a specialist contractor to install the fan filters and the mechanical equipment and this aided us in creating a facility of such a high classification.

With Phase One of the project now complete, site staff are now looking towards the second phase of the project in order to complete the pilot scheme.

Commenting on the completion of Phase One, Ridd said:

“Due to the nature of the project, trying to create an industrial environment such as this produced many challenges. The mechanical systems had to be integrated into the construction program of the cleanroom; which required careful planning and attention to detail in order to bring everything together. This coordinated approach ensured no major problems were encountered. The main contractor and their sub- contractors work extremely hard to meet a very tight program.”

Ridd added:

“We became involved with the project as it falls within the remit of the work we undertake. Greenbuild Consult is a Sustainable Construction Consultancy offering practical services to enable clients to identify the benefits of incorporating sustainable and environmentally friendly practices into the construction of their projects.

“Greenbuild specialize in undertaking environmental assessments of new buildings, under the BREEAM umbrella. What attracted us to the pilot line project was its great potential to make buildings far more sustainable than they have been before; this is an area we have a passion for and we are excited to have been involved in such a project.

“The creation of this facility is the next step in innovation for the steel coatings industry and we believe this will drive sustainability forward, defining new ways in which energy can be produced.”

Univ. of Minnesota Awarded $28M Microelectronics Grant

The University of Minnesota has been awarded a $28 million grant over five years to lead a national research center focused on developing the next generation of microelectronics. About one-third of the grant will support research in Minnesota.

The grant was awarded by the Semiconductor Research Corp., a global research collaboration of private companies, universities, and government agencies, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Minnesota is one of six lead universities (including the University of Notre Dame) to receive funding through the Semiconductor Technology Advanced Research network (STARnet) initiative aimed at supporting continued growth and leadership of the U.S. semiconductor industry.

The new Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces, and Novel Architectures (C-SPIN) at the University of Minnesota will bring together top researchers from across the nation to develop technologies for spin-based computing and memory systems. Unlike today's computers, which function on the basis of electrical charges moving across wires, the emerging spin-based computing systems will process and store information through spin, a fundamental property of electrons.

"The incredible ability to scale semiconductor technology, an electron-charge-based technology, has led to the information revolution of the past half-century," says C-SPIN's director Jian-Ping Wang, an electrical and computer engineering professor in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering. "However, today's semiconductor technology is reaching its fundamental limits in terms of density and power consumption. Spin-based logic and memory based on the hybridization of magnetic materials and semiconductors have the potential to create computers that are smaller, faster and more energy-efficient than conventional charge-based systems."

The research will also have an impact beyond the world of computer science and engineering resulting in advances in nanotechnology, materials science, physics, chemistry, circuit design, and many other fields, Wang said.

"This new center is just one example of how research at the University of Minnesota can help boost the economy locally and globally," says University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler. "This center will bring together the nation’s best minds in spintronics to push the boundaries of research and develop new discoveries that will benefit all of us."

C-SPIN is headquartered at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and will fund research for 31 leading experts from 14 universities working in six scientific disciplines. C-SPIN will also fund research from more than 60 doctoral and post-doctoral students and host industry researchers-in-residence.

In addition to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, the 13 other universities involved are Carnegie Mellon University; Cornell University; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Pennsylvania State University; Purdue University; University of Alabama; University of California, Riverside; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Iowa; University of Michigan; University of Nebraska; and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Industry partners include Applied Materials, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel Corp., Micron Technology, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, and United Technologies.

University of Illinois-led SONIC Center Computing on Nanoscale Fabrics

“Society is increasingly dependent on electronic information and has come to expect electronic devices - cell phones, tablets, laptops, cameras and others - to decrease in cost, offer more features and provide longer-lasting battery power. In the past, such advances have been made possible by the frequent reduction in size of a basic building block - the transistor switch.

Today, these switches are so small that their behavior is fraught with uncertainty due to quantum effects. The challenge is to design reliable and energy-efficient computing systems using the unreliable switches that arise as researchers seek to make devices even smaller and more energy-efficient. SONIC's innovative research agenda seeks to address this issue by treating the problem of computing using unreliable devices and circuits as one of communicating information over unreliable channels.

"Essentially, we're not going to try to build a reliable switch, but instead discover methods to build reliable systems," said SONIC Director Naresh Shanbhag, the Jack S. Kilby Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "It turns out that while information resides at the highest level and nanoscale components at the lowest level, they can both be mathematically described with the same statistical framework. No one has successfully captured this similarity between them before."

The center seeks to create a new computing paradigm - using information processing instead of data processing - to extend scaling of nanoscale devices beyond what is feasible today. Computing devices today are primarily data pipes and data crunchers. By borrowing probabilistic techniques from the field of communications, SONIC researchers plan to transform these systems into statistical information processors that are able to infer intent and handle uncertainty while consuming much less energy than traditional computers.

SONIC is supported by STARnet, which will provide funding over the next five years to six centers at universities. Funded by the Department of Defense and U.S. semiconductor and supplier companies as a public-private partnership, STARnet projects help maintain U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology vital to U.S. prosperity, security and intelligence. The STARnet program is administered by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world's leading university research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), part of the Department of Defense.

"STARnet is a collaborative network of stellar university research centers whose goal is to enable the continued pace of growth of the microelectronics industry, unconstrained by the daunting list of fundamental physical limits that threaten," said Gilroy Vandentop, the new SRC program executive director.

"This is a truly multidisciplinary research effort. Here at Illinois, we have faculty investigators from the Departments of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering, " said Andrew Singer, a theme leader in SONIC and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The Coordinated Science Laboratory at Illinois, where four SONIC researchers are faculty members, will support SONIC's administrative activities.

The SONIC team consists of 23 faculty researchers from universities across the nation, including Carnegie Mellon University; Princeton University; Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Michigan. Other Illinois faculty include Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, Rakesh Kumar, and Eric Pop, Electrical and Computer Engineering; John A. Rogers, Materials Science and Engineering; and Rob Rutenbar, Computer Science.

In addition to SONIC, University of Illinois researchers are also involved with two other STARnet research centers. Douglas L. Jones, a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will contribute to the TerraSwarm Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which aims to address pervasive integration of smart, networked sensors and actuators into our connected world. Wen-mei Hwu and Deming Chen, both Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty, will participate in the Center for Future Architectures Research (C-FAR), led by the University of Michigan. C-FAR will develop future scalable computer systems architectures that leverage emerging circuit fabrics to enable new commercial/defense applications.

National Precision Bearing Doubles Cleanroom Capacity

National Precision Bearing, a supplier and distributor for various types of bearings, has opened an ISO Class 6 cleanroom facility at its headquarters in Preston, Wash. The addition of the Class 1,000 cleanroom doubles the company's capacity for relubrication.

The additional space and new equipment will make it possible to meet industry demand for specialty bearing relubrication for industries such as aerospace, defense, medical, and food processing. NPB relubricates new parts from inventory to meet lubrication and fill requirements on standard parts, as well as customer-owned inventory to help manufacturers and other distributors meet shelf life and on-hand inventory requirements.

The cleaning and relubrication process at NPB is audited and certified by both customer and third party inspectors. Among other standards, the cleanroom facility is certified to ISO 14644-1, 14644-2, and the entire process is included in National Precision Bearing’s AS9100 Rev. C certified quality system. National’s cleanroom is also factory certified for lubrication by bearing manufacturers such as New Hampshire Ball Bearings and RBC Bearings.

Kansas State Opens Cleanroom

Kansas State University has opened a Class 100 cleanroom. The $3 million cleanroom is located in the Semiconductor Materials and Radiological Technologies (S.M.A.R.T.) Laboratory, which is dedicated to the research and development of new and innovative radiation detector technologies. The S.M.A.R.T. laboratory spans more than 6,000 sq. ft. of lab space divided into specialized research labs.

The cleanroom, largely funded and supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, spans 1,000 sq. ft. and is dedicated to the fabrication of innovative radiation detectors and the development of mass production processes needed to provide these detectors at affordable prices.

The S.M.A.R.T. laboratory has been supported by more than $16 million in numerous government and corporate sponsors, including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, National Science Foundation, the U.S. Dept. of Energy Nuclear Engineering Education Research Program, and the U.S. Dept. of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration.

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