OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
January 2014
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Purdue Univ., Ray W. Herrick Laboratories, West Lafayette, IN
TOWA Launches New Packaging Development Center
Georgia State Opens Nanotech Center
UPenn Opens Weiss/Manfredi-designed Nanotech Facility
Potomac Photonics Announces Expansion
French Company Expands Laser Facilities
MEMS Research Collaboration Announced
University of Minnesota Completes Nanotechnology Building
The new S$75 million Keppel-NUS Corporate Laboratory was recently launched in Singapore. One of its research aims is to develop technological solutions to meet the challenges of oil and gas exploration and production in harsh environments like the Arctic. It is the second corporate laboratory launched under a scheme by the National Research Foundation to enhance collaboration between universities and industries. The new lab will be based at the NUS Faculty of Engineering.
The Arctic is rich in petroleum and mineral resources. But it is also a harsh environment where temperatures can dip to as low as minus 60 degrees. Getting to these resources is a challenge that can hopefully be overcome through more focused research efforts.
Michael Chia, managing director (Marine and Technology) at Keppel Offshore & Marine, said: "It is an area where not a lot of experience has been gained so far. And ice is something which is quite unpredictable, especially even more so now with climate change... So we need to look at those instances whereby we can develop our structures to be able to sustain that kind of different environmental conditions."
The Keppel-NUS Corporate Laboratory signifies deeper collaboration and synergy between industry and academia. This means that Keppel can bring industry-related challenges to the table to see if researchers can come up with solutions to them. For researchers it is also an opportunity for them to figure out how commercially viable their projects are.
Other research areas at the new lab include refining current deepwater technology for oil and gas exploration and production, developing competencies to explore and exploit mineral resources in deep oceans in an environmentally-friendly way, and increasing productivity while reducing reliance on manpower in some shipyard activities such as welding, painting and operations in confined spaces.
Professor Low Teck Seng, CEO of the National Research Foundation, said: "I think what is important for us in Singapore is to make sure the investments we have made in research and development get translated so that there is accrued benefit to Singapore and Singaporeans.
“So this aspect of translation can only be effected if you bring companies together with our research performers, the universities and research institutes. So having this Keppel corporate lab in NUS is a very pro-active approach in seeing how we can actually catalyse and accelerate translation of technologies in a very important area for us, because Keppel is number one in certain areas of technology in the marine-offshore space."
Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said at the launch that the new lab will add vibrancy to the marine and offshore industry in Singapore.
Mr Teo, who is also chairman of the National Research Foundation, said: "We hope the Keppel-NUS collaboration will encourage other local companies to forge strategic alliances with our research performers, to do future-oriented, practical research that creates economic value for Singapore and good jobs for Singaporeans."
The partnership between Keppel Corporation and NUS will involve 44 principal investigators, co-principal investigators and external collaborators. It will also create 54 new positions for research fellows and engineers and train some 30 PhD and Masters students in five years.
The new building and facilities expand the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories, a hub of industry-oriented research in areas ranging from advanced automotive technologies to "smart" buildings. The new Herrick building roughly doubles the size of the labs, which are administered by the School of Mechanical Engineering. The new building houses the Center for High Performance Buildings, where research is focused on equipment and operational technologies to make possible future buildings that are safer and energy efficient. A special feature is a "living lab"—a working office wing designed with replaceable modular elements including windows, a reconfigurable air distribution and lighting system and instrumentation to monitor and assess the environment within the offices and its impact on occupants. In addition, Herrick's current facilities, such as an advanced engine test area, were replaced and expanded. The new facility also will house components of Federal Aviation Administration multi-university centers specializing in studying the environment inside the cabin of a commercial airliner and the impact of aircraft noise. Construction began in October 2011. About one-third of the project's cost was funded by the NIST with the largely from private donors.
Budget: $35 million
Size: 68,000 sq. ft.
Project team: Flad Architects, Madison, WI. (architect); Affiliated Engineers Inc. of Madison, WI (MEP)
MIT’s Director of Campus Planning, Engineering & Construction, Richard L. Amster, confirms that the university’s Building 12 could be demolished as early as this summer, pending approval by the City of Cambridge. The removal of the building will make way for the Nano-Materials, Structures, and Systems Lab (nMaSS), which is projected to be completed in 2018.
Amster says that Building 12 is currently “a tired old building that sub-optimizes the use of space at its incredible location.” Amster also mentioned that the location of nMaSS on the building 12 site is beneficial because it serves as a crossroads for a lot of technical work related to the research that will go on at nMaSS. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering labs in Building 4 and the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in Buildings 26, 36, and 38 are all nearby.
The construction of nMaSS will bring together research and equipment related to nanotechnology and materials that are currently spread across several different areas of campus. The new building will also include cleanroom space and other amenities to accommodate new, more sensitive research equipment. In a video released in April 2011 outlining the MIT 2030 plan, former MIT President Susan J. Hockfield referred to the construction of nMaSS as the Institute’s “highest academic priority” in the plan for campus development.
The first floor of Building 12 gets a fair amount of traffic during the day. It is currently the home of a few classrooms, an athena cluster, the Global Education and Career Development Offices, the Writing and Communication Center, and the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, among other programs. The offices in Building 12 have been notified of the impending move and are beginning to formulate their plans to find alternate space on campus.
The TOWA Corporation of Japan, a supplier of packaging equipment for semiconductor, electronics and LED industries, has decided to expand their activities in Europe with an Innovation Center for Packaging Development and announced the launch of TOWA Europe B.V.
Europe has become an area where special IC s and electronic applications are being developed and produced, such as sensors, MEMS, vision applications, specific ICs, in particular for semiconductor, automotive and medical applications. In 2004 TOWA Europe GmbH was established, to serve the many European customers. The activities originally consisted of the supply of the TOWA encapsulation equipment, after sales service and spare parts.
In addition to this, the cooperation with the package/product development centers of European customers and European institutes became an important activity and TOWA Europe started to play a role in the development of new products.
To further expand this, it has been decided to establish a Packaging Development Center in the Netherlands, for which TOWA Europe has been founded. This center is located at Geograaf 14, Duiven, The Netherlands.
A fully equipped laboratory with 2 TOWA molding systems, test and measuring equipment as well as an engineering department is available to give full support in all the phases of product development, from initial concept up to test, qualification and industrialization.
The TOWA Corporation of Japan, founded in 1979, is a supplier of molding and singulation equipment for the global semiconductor and electronics industries
The Center for Nano-Optics, a research center whose focus on the science of developing tools and instruments as small as 1,000 times thinner than a human hair could lead to major breakthroughs in technology and biomedicine, has been created at Georgia State University.
“Creation of the Center for Nano-Optics is an important next step for the university,” says James Weyhenmeyer, vice president of research and economic development. “Under the leadership of Georgia State Physics Professor Mark Stockman, a group of physics faculty will expand the university’s nanotechnology focus and continue the development of two university inventions – the spaser and the nanoplasmonic metal funnel.”
The spaser is a laser that is 1,000 times smaller than the smallest laser and also 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. Success in incorporating spaser technology into transistors, something that cannot be done now, may lead to computer processors that operate 100 to1,000 times faster than today’s processors. The spasers may also help biomedical researchers identify and track single cancer cells in the bloodstream.
The second invention is the plasmonic metal funnel designed with a very thin needle at the end. This technology allows energy to be delivered to very small spaces. The funnel is already widely used in microscopes to give researchers the ability to see on the nanoscale.
“The center will unite a group of talented physics faculty that has been developing within the department for close to a decade,” Stockman says. “This [center] designation will allow us to unite our efforts and significant resources, providing a common vision and general plan for the continued development of our inventions.”
In addition to Stockman, the center faculty includes: Vadym Apalkov, Nikolaus Dietz, Xiaochun He, Alexander Kozhanov, Steven Manson, Ramesh Mani, Unil Perera, and Murad Sarsour. Their combined research efforts have led to the accumulation of more than $11 million in federal funding and publication in premier science journals, including Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Photonics, Physical Review Letters, and Nature Communications. They have formed international partnerships with researchers in Germany, France, India, Italy, S. Korea, Taiwan, China, and Australia.
Stockman and the center team have also been named leaders of a $7.5 million U.S. Department of Defense Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant. In the framework of this MURI grant, the researchers will work with Purdue University, the University of Central Florida, the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University, and Cornell University to study random lasers, nano-spasers, and optical rogue waves.
Georgia State’s strategic plan places a high importance on the creation of new centers and enhancement of existing collaborative research groups. The university is already home to the Center for Inflammation, Immunity and Infection; and the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.
The Univ. of Pennsylvania officially opened a new facility for advanced research, education and innovative public-private partnerships in nanotechnology. The 78,000 sq. ft. Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology serves as the university’s focal point for work in the emerging field of nanotechnology.
Faculty from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Arts and Sciences will make use of the Singh Center’s characterization and fabrication suites. Each of the two 10,000-sf facilities is filled with state-of-the-art equipment and designed to enable the high-precision techniques that research at the smallest scales necessitates. The new facility has lab spaces including a 10,000 sq. ft. bay/chase cleanroom, a 6,500 sq. ft. characterization suite and 12,000 sq. ft. of lab modules. Public spaces include a Galleria, conference rooms and multipurpose forum space.
The characterization facility is situated on bedrock, 18 ft below the surface, to help minimize vibrations that would interfere with its various atomic and electron microscopes. Its labs are also designed to be isolated from temperature fluctuations, atmospheric turbulence and electromagnetic noise.
The fabrication facility on the Singh Center’s ground floor contains a next-generation cleanroom. Once in isolation garb, researchers will use its assembly tools to grow carbon nanotubes, deposit graphene and etch microelectronic systems, among many other applications. The facility’s photolithography equipment is shielded from interfering ultraviolet light by a pane of marigold glass, which gives the Center its signature color.
The Singh Center will also help Penn-developed technology move from the lab to the marketplace via connections with local industry development leaders such as the Nanotechnology Institute and Ben Franklin Technology Partners, as well as Penn’s internal commercialization engine, the Center for Technology Transfer. Existing industry members, from pharmaceutical companies to computer chip designers, will also make use of the Singh Center’s characterization and fabrication facilities.
The building was designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, a multidisciplinary design practice based in New York City. The Singh Center has already won a 2013 American Architecture Award and a 2013 International Architecture Award, presented by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Digital fabrication company Potomac Photonics is expanding to the BWTech at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) center in Baltimore, Maryland. The company, which deals with laser micromachining, 3D Printing, micro hole drilling, micro CNC, and other manufacturing technologies, expects to complete 60% of the move by January 1, with the grand opening slated for March 2014.
Potomac will expand its capabilities to include a 1,200 sq. ft. cleanroom for processing medical devices and microelectronics, the integration of new processes into its contract services, and access to talent in a myriad of tech fields associated with UMBC.
Potomac President and CEO Mike Adelstein says, “Rather than just renting space, being part of a leading innovation center gives us access to collaboration with faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, an institution with an engineering and physics focus. Even more importantly, we’ll be able to access student talent at all levels as potential employees and interact with other companies in the biotech and clean energy space. We are grateful to Baltimore County and the State of Maryland who provided key financial incentives to facilitate the move.”
The new location also provides Potomac with conference, classroom, and workshop space, as well as expanded service, training, and demo facilities on high-resolution 3D Printers such as the ProJet series. The UMBC facility will also give Potomac the opportunity to collaborate with the non-profit FabLab Hub, which provides training and workshops for anyone new to digital fabrication. FabLab Hub is associated with the MIT International FabLab Network based at the Center for Bits and Atoms in Cambridge, Mass.
Potomac’s current facility in Lanham, Md., is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485:2003 certified.
ALPhANOV, the optical and laser technological center of the Route des lasers cluster, has expanded its facility in the Institut d’optique d’Aquitaine, near Bordeaux, France. The facility covers more than 6,500 sq. ft. and will be able to accommodate all of its teams, which were previously spread over two separate sites. The expansion features a larger cleanroom and experimental facilities. The laser micromachining department will join the Institut d’optique d’Aquitaine in early 2014.
ALPhANOV will be able to expand its work with the research center LAPHIA (Lasers and Photonics in Aquitaine) and within the LP2N laboratory (Laboratoire de Photonique, Numérique et Nanosciences), which is also installed in the Institut d’optique d’Aquitaine. The expansion allows the work done in large composites machining and tissue engineering by laser to increase, as well as the deployment of an industrialization pilot line.
The facility will be able to accommodate partner companies to strengthen existing projects or encourage the development of new collaborations. The scope of the technological support to the business development will be expanded through joint work with the entrepreneurship training of the Institut d’optique Graduate School (IOGS), another tenant of the new institute.
Benoit Appert-Collin, ALPhANOV CEO, says, "Our installation in the Institut d’optique d’Aquitaine, close to our industrial and scientific partners, will enable us to further expand our co-developments. Meanwhile, the significant increase of the surface of our facilities matches our plans for co-location of R&D and diversification of our areas of expertise."
CEA-Leti announces a development agreement with OMRON, a factory automation and control solutions company dealing with the transportation, healthcare, and consumer-goods industries.
While Leti has a Tokyo office and has partnered with Japanese companies and research organizations for many years, the agreement is Leti's first collaboration with a Japanese MEMS producer. OMRON Corp. is headquartered in Kyoto, Japan.
"OMRON is looking forward to this collaboration with Leti in the field of MEMS," says Yoshio Sekiguchi, senior general manager at OMRON's Micro Devices HQ. "We see true synergies between our MEMS division and Leti's world-leading operations in this field."
Leti has Europe's largest MEMS R&D lab on one site, with more than 150 engineers, technicians, Ph.D. students, and post-doc researchers working on projects for consumer applications and mobile phones, and for the automotive, space, defense, and health markets. Its MEMS research domains include actuators, sensors, RF MEMS and passives, packaging and associated design kits, and characterization and reliability testing.
"We are excited about working with OMRON's MEMS division, which is a worldwide leader in this technology," says Julien Arcamone, MEMS business development manager at Leti. "This agreement underscores the quality of Leti's advanced offerings for the global MEMS market, as well as its growing portfolio of international partners."
Leti partners with large industrials, SMEs, and startups to provide research and production of micro- and nanotechnologies. Its 26,000 ft² of new-generation cleanroom space features 200mm and 300mm wafer processing of micro and nano solutions for applications ranging from space to smart devices. Leti is based in Grenoble, France
Faculty and staff are moving their offices and lab equipment into the new space, nested between the Scholars Walk and engineering buildings, but the grand opening isn’t scheduled until April 2014. In 2011, the state Legislature approved $51.3 million in bonding funds for the $83 million project. Physics and astronomy head Ron Poling said the building will staff about 27 professors and 125 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and staff members.
“Research groups will be closer together [in the building],” physics and astronomy professor Paul Crowell says. “Although the building doesn’t have classrooms, it does have seminar and meeting rooms, which we don’t have in [Tate Laboratory].”
The new building was designed to make research easier for scientists in physics and nanotechnology fields, which include research on everything from computer chips to pharmaceutical drugs.
The building features a cleanroom, which is a controlled environment that has a low level of pollutants like dust, says Minnesota Nano Center Director Stephen Campbell. The new cleanroom was necessary, Campbell says, because researchers have outgrown the current one, which is located in the corner of Keller Hall’s basement.
Since it opened in 1990, the Minnesota Nano Center has grown to more than 330 users, including 100 researchers from other universities. The additional cleanroom will help researchers use the space more efficiently, Campbell said, since they’ve outgrown their current lab. Having two cleanrooms will also provide backup equipment. In the new building, the cleanroom is located next to the scientist’s laboratories, which helps scientists work more easily.
“Sometimes scientists need to make materials [outside of] the cleanroom and then bring them in and apply them,” Campbell says.
Associate professor Vincent Noireaux, whose research focuses on trying to synthesize artificial cells, says the building’s organization and extra space will help make his research more efficient.
Associate professor of experimental physics and astronomy Vuk Mandic says the cleanroom is important for the next steps of his experiments, which focus on looking at germanium or silicon crystals in order to understand the universe.
Poling says the building’s 20-foot-tall laboratory is another benefit because it will allow enough space for researchers to design and build large experiments.
“In the NOvA project, we … weren’t able to do a lot of testing at [the] design stage of modules because there was no space big enough to do it,” he says.
The newer facility has other upgraded utilities like fume hoods and better network access, which will make the work environment better for research, Mandic says.
The physics and nanotechnology building’s new lab space will also help the University hire new researchers, Crowell says.
“Now when we hire new faculty members, they can participate with design,” Crowell says. “The laboratory space is there, and major utilities are in place. Hopefully [it will] help us in recruiting for the University.”
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