OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
November 2019
McIlvaine Company
Grant makes UC
Santa Barbara Home to Nation’s First NSF-Funded Quantum Foundry
Engineering Innovation Hub Completes on SUNY New Paltz Campus
Mecart Builds
Cleanroom for 5G Wireless Tech Company
Linde Starts Up New Plant for Electronics Manufacturer in Shanghai
Grant makes
UC Santa Barbara Home to Nation’s First NSF-Funded Quantum Foundry
A Quantum Leap:
$25M
grant makes UC Santa Barbara home to the nation’s first NSF-funded Quantum
Foundry,
a center for development of materials for quantum information-based
technologies.
Researchers around the world are racing to
understand these materials and harness their unique qualities to develop
revolutionary quantum technologies for quantum computing, communications,
sensing, simulation and other quantum technologies not yet imaginable.
UC Santa Barbara stepped to the front of that
worldwide research race by being named the site of the nation’s first Quantum
Foundry.
Funded by an initial six-year, $25-million
grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project, known officially
as the UC Santa Barbara NSF Quantum Foundry, will involve 20 faculty members
from the campus’s materials, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering and
computer science departments, plus myriad collaborating partners. The new center
will be anchored within the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) in Elings
Hall.
The grant provides substantial funding to
build equipment and develop tools necessary to the effort. It also supports a
multi-front research mission comprising collaborative interdisciplinary projects
within a network of university, industry, and national-laboratory partners to
create, process, and characterize materials for quantum information science. The
Foundry will also develop outreach and educational programs aimed at
familiarizing students at all levels with quantum science, creating a new
paradigm for training students in the rapidly evolving field of quantum
information science and engaging with industrial partners to accelerate
development of the coming quantum workforce.
“We are extremely proud that the National
Science Foundation has chosen UC Santa Barbara as home to the nation’s first
NSF-funded Quantum Foundry,” said Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “The award is a
testament to the strength of our University’s interdisciplinary science,
particularly in materials, physics and chemistry, which lie at the core of
quantum endeavors. It also recognizes our proven track record of working closely
with industry to bring technologies to practical application, our
state-of-the-art facilities and our educational and outreach programs that are
mutually complementary with our research.
“Under the direction of physics professor
Ania Bleszynski Jayich and materials professor Stephen Wilson the foundry will
provide a collaborative environment for researchers to continue exploring
quantum phenomena, designing quantum materials and building instruments and
computers based on the basic principles of quantum mechanics,” Yang added.
Said Joseph Incandela, the campus’s vice
chancellor for research, “UC Santa Barbara is a natural choice for the NSF
quantum materials Foundry. We have outstanding faculty, researchers, and
facilities, and a great tradition of multidisciplinary collaboration. Together
with our excellent students and close industry partnerships, they have created a
dynamic environment where research gets translated into important technologies.”
“Being selected to build and host the
nation’s first Quantum Foundry is tremendously exciting and extremely
important,” said Rod Alferness, dean of the College of Engineering. “It
recognizes the vision and the decades of work that have made UC Santa Barbara a
truly world-leading institution worthy of assuming a leadership role in a
mission as important as advancing quantum science and the transformative
technologies it promises to enable.”
“Advances in quantum science require a highly
integrated interdisciplinary approach, because there are many hard challenges
that need to be solved on many fronts,” said Bleszynski Jayich. “One of the big
ideas behind the Foundry is to take these early theoretical ideas that are just
beginning to be experimentally viable and use quantum mechanics to produce
technologies that can outperform classical technologies.”
Doing so, however, will require new
materials.
“Quantum technologies are fundamentally
materials-limited, and there needs to be some sort of leap or evolution of the
types of materials we can harness,” noted Wilson. “The Foundry is where we will
try to identify and create those materials.”
Quantum Foundry research will be pursued in
three main areas, or “thrusts”:
Natively Entangled Materials, which relates
to identifying and characterizing materials that intrinsically host any on
excitations and long-range entangled states with topological, or structural,
protection against decoherence. These include new intrinsic topological
superconductors and quantum spin liquids, as well as materials that enable
topological quantum computing.
Interfaced Topological States, in which
researchers will seek to create and control protected quantum states in
hybrid materials.
Coherent Quantum Interfaces, where the focus
will be on engineering materials having localized quantum states that can be
interfaced with various other quantum degrees of freedom (e.g. photons or
phonons) for distributing quantum information while retaining robust
coherence.
Developing these new materials and assessing
their potential for hosting the needed coherent quantum state requires
specialized equipment, much of which does not exist yet. A significant portion
of the NSF grant is designated to develop such infrastructure, both to purchase
required tools and equipment and to fabricate new tools necessary both to grow
and characterize the quantum states in the new materials, Wilson said.
UC Santa Barbara’s deep well of shared
materials growth and characterization infrastructure was also a factor in
securing the grant. The Foundry will leverage existing facilities, such as the
large suite of instrumentation shared via the Materials Research Lab and the
California Nanosystems Institute, multiple molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth
chambers (the university has the largest number of MBE apparatuses in academia),
unique optical facilities such as the Terahertz Facility, state-of-the-art clean
rooms, and others among the more than 300 shared instruments on campus.
Data Science
NSF is keenly interested in both generating
and sharing data from materials experiments. “We are going to capture Foundry
data and harness it to facilitate discovery,” said Wilson. “The idea is to
curate and share data to accelerate discovery at this new frontier of quantum
information science.”
Industrial Partners
Industry collaborations are an important part
of the Foundry project. UC Santa Barbara’s well-established history of
industrial collaboration — it leads all universities in the U.S. in terms of
industrial research dollars per capita — and the application focus that allows
it to transition ideas into materials and materials into technologies, was
important in receiving the Foundry grant.
Another value of industrial collaboration,
Wilson explained, is that often, faculty might be looking at something
interesting without being able to visualize how it might be useful in a
scaled-up commercial application. “If you have an array of directions you could
go, it is essential to have partners to help you visualize those having
near-term potential,” he said.
“This is a unique case where industry is
highly interested while we are still at the basic-science level,” said
Bleszynski Jayich. “There’s a huge industry partnership component to this.”
Among the 10 inaugural industrial partners
are Microsoft, Google, IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, HRL, Northrop Grumman,
Bruker, SomaLogic, NVision, and Anstrom Science. Microsoft and Google have
substantial campus presences already; Microsoft’s Quantum Station Q lab is here,
and UC Santa Barbara professor and Google chief scientist John Martinis and a
team of his Ph.D. student researchers are working with Google at its Santa
Barbara office, adjacent to campus, to develop Google’s quantum computer.
Undergraduate Education
In addition, with approximately 700 students,
UC Santa Barbara’s undergraduate physics program is the largest in the U.S.
“Many of these students, as well as many undergraduate engineering and chemistry
students, are hungry for an education in quantum science, because it’s a
fascinating subject that defies our classical intuition, and on top of that, it
offers career opportunities. It can’t get much better than that,” Bleszynski
Jayich said.
Graduate Education Program
Another major goal of the Foundry project is
to integrate quantum science into education and to develop the quantum
workforce. The traditional approach to quantum education at the university level
has been for students to take physics classes, which are focused on the
foundational theory of quantum mechanics.
“But there is an emerging interdisciplinary
component of quantum information that people are not being exposed to in that
approach,” Wilson explained. “Having input from many overlapping disciplines in
both hard science and engineering is required, as are experimental touchstones
for trying to understand these phenomena. Student involvement in industry
internships and collaborative research with partner companies is important in
addressing that.”
“We want to introduce a more practical
quantum education,” Bleszynski Jayich added. “Normally you learn quantum
mechanics by learning about hydrogen atoms and harmonic oscillators, and it’s
all theoretical. That training is still absolutely critical, but now we want to
supplement it, leveraging our abilities gained in the past 20 to 30 years to
control a quantum system on the single-atom, single-quantum-system level.
Students will take lab classes where they can manipulate quantum systems and
observe the highly counterintuitive phenomena that don’t make sense in our
classical world. And, importantly, they will learn various cutting-edge
techniques for maintaining quantum coherence.
“That’s particularly important,” she
continued, “because quantum technologies rely on the success of the beautiful,
elegant theory of quantum mechanics, but in practice we need unprecedented
control over our experimental systems in order to observe and utilize their
delicate quantum behavior.”
Cleanroom
Suite Opens for Business at London Centre for Nanotechnology
New cleanrooms and optics labs have been
designed and installed by Clean Room Construction for King’s College London’s
Strand Campus
A new £2 million cleanroom suite has entered
operation in the UK. Located at King’s College London’s Strand Campus, the
project comprises state-of-the-art cleanrooms and optics labs designed and
installed by Clean Room Construction.
The new cleanrooms form part of the London
Centre for Nanotechnology, and the facilities will be run by the Photonics and
Nanotechnology Group in the Department of Physics.
“This new suite of laboratories is an
important expansion of our photonics and nanotechnology research and will
strengthen our ability to deliver advances in this strategically important
research area," said KCL Physics lecturer, Dr James Millen.
CRC designed and installed an atomic layer
deposition cleanroom facility and two optics labs, at the Strand site on
schedule.
The two-stage design and build project, which
has been integrated into the university’s IT, fire alarm and security systems,
included Class 5 and Class 6 cleanrooms with shared changing room and service
chase.
Bill Luckhurst, KCL’s Facilities
Manager/Research Technician from the Department of Physics, commented: “We knew
we needed three key components when we were looking for the right company to
work collaboratively with us to design and deliver this project within a busy
teaching and learning environment: experience, innovation and reliability.
"All the work had to be carried out while the
university continued to function too. Clean Room Construction had a
client-focused approach from start to finish and ticked all the boxes. We can
all be proud of the end result.”
“Clean Room Construction is very proud to
have collaborated with the university to deliver these first-class facilities,"
said Steve Lawton, CRC’s Managing Director. "These new laboratories will enable
King’s to expand and progress their research in new ways with academic
researchers and industry leaders and also to establish new collaborations and
opportunities for the next generation of students and researchers," he
concluded.
The site officially opened on 3 October at
the Departments of Physics.
Engineering
Innovation Hub Completes on SUNY New Paltz Campus
The State University of New York (SUNY) at
New Paltz’s new Engineering Innovation Hub (EIH) has recently completed
construction.
Designed by Urbahn Architects, the two-story
EIH was built on a former parking lot on SUNY New Paltz’s main campus. It was
designed to allow for a potential expansion to the east if the program requires
more space in the future.
The $13.5million, 19,500 sq. ft. building
houses the College’s bachelor’s degree program in mechanical engineering,
teaching and research lab spaces, 3D print prototyping labs, and the school’s
Hudson Valley Additive Manufacturing Center (HVAMC).
The HVAMC’s collection of 3D printers are
some of the most advanced technology at any academic laboratory in the United
States, according to the university. SUNY is the first institution of higher
education in the country to be designated a Stratasys-MakerBot Additive Research
& Teaching (or SMART) lab by Stratasys, a 3D printing hardware and systems
company.
The building welcomes students via a 661-sf
entrance lobby designed to foster collaboration. It features display cabinets
for 3D-printed artifacts, counters with computer charging and data outlets,
lounge-style seating, and whiteboards. The building’s first floor also features
seating niches within the hallways along the windows that integrate with
benches, data access, and charging stations. A 1,900-sf teaching lab includes
polished-concrete floors and painted steel columns, beams, and a metal deck
ceiling. The HVAMC space is located on the first floor across from the teaching
lab. An 850-sf machine shop, mechanical and electrical rooms, and public
bathrooms round out the first floor.
The second floor is home to a smaller
lounge/collaborative space at the end of its main corridor, eight faculty
offices, an open office space, a 300-sf conference room, three research/teaching
labs, and a 1,200-sf computer lab.
The EIH is centrally located on the SUNY
campus and was designed to meet LEED Silver certification requirements.
Also, on the Build Team: PC Construction
(gc), Vanderweil Engineers (mechanical and electrical engineer), Leslie E.
Robertson Associates (structural engineer) BET Engineering Consultants (civil
engineer), and Edgewater Design (landscape designer).
Mecart
Builds Cleanroom for 5G Wireless Tech Company
Mecart, the Canadian manufacturer of turnkey
modular cleanrooms, has been chosen by Knowles Precision Devices (Knowles) to
deliver a production space classified ISO 7 at its US-based facility in
Cazenovia, New York.
Construction is underway and planned to be
completed in early 2020.
Knowles produces engineered capacitors and
microwave to millimetre-wave components for use in critical applications in
military, medical, electric vehicle, and 5G market segments. The company is
currently working on the early production of millimetre-wave filters to support
first-generation 5G wireless communication needs.
Phase 1 of this project comprises a new
cleanroom of approximately 7,000 square feet of ISO 7 space. The entire project,
located in Cazenovia, will be in excess of 12,000 square feet when complete.
Commenting on the project, Charles Lipeles,
VP of US Operations at Mecart, said: “When Knowles approached us, they were
clear that lead time was crucial as was a tight specification, showroom-type
cleanroom. These goals are, of course, very challenging to reach simultaneously,
but Mecart is fully qualified for the job. We are excited to work with the
Knowles team and help them exceed their goals."
For this project, Mecart designed, engineered
and manufactured fully custom, four-inch structural steel panels at its Canadian
plant in Quebec City.
We met with the Mecart team, review the
project, and very quickly got a detailed, guaranteed quote.
Mecart is a Canadian manufacturer of turnkey
modular cleanroom with 45 years of experience in air handling technology. The
fully custom, 4” structural steel panels are designed, engineered, and
manufactured at their Canadian plant in Quebec City. Their smooth finish and
strength make them perfect for any cleanroom projects, from the most stringent
ISO 5 facilities to ISO 8.
Gilberto Valenzuela, Director of Project
Management from Knowles, commented: “We were excited to meet with the Mecart
team, review the project, and very quickly get a detailed, guaranteed quote. It
has been a great experience thus far and we know that we picked the best partner
for this critical capital project.”
Mecart builds cleanrooms for the
semiconductor industry but also focuses on higher specification drug compounding
facilities, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical customers, as well as medical
devices projects.
About Knowles Corporation:
Knowles Corporation specializes in acoustics,
software and signal processing, to solve customers’ critical audio challenges
for the Mobile, Ear and IoT markets. As one of the industry’s leading provider
of high-performance audio solutions, Knowles delivers improved audio quality and
enables consumers to control technology with voice.
Linde Starts
Up New Plant for Electronics Manufacturer in Shanghai
Linde has started up a new Spectra high
purity nitrogen generator in Shanghai, China to support the expansion of a
leading semiconductor manufacturer in the ZhangJiang Hi-tech Park.
The industrial gas giant said its nitrogen
will be used throughout the new semiconductor fabrication plant, supporting
direct production process applications and the general purging and inerting of
various semiconductor manufacturing systems.
The new plant, installed and operated by
Linde’s joint venture Linde LienHwa (LLH), will also supply nitrogen via
pipeline to existing customers in the industrial park.
“We have worked closely with our customer to
expand the high purity gases infrastructure needed for their advanced wafer
processing facilities”, said LLH China President, Stan Tang.
“With this new investment we are pleased to
safely and reliably support our customer’s growth, while also upgrading our
infrastructure to meet increased demand in the electronics market.”
Pfeiffer
Vacuum Opens New Plant in China
Pfeiffer Vacuum, a provider of vacuum
solutions for the semiconductor, industrial, coating, analytical and R&D
markets, has celebrated the expansion of its facility in Wuxi, China.
Double its original size, the new, expanded
facility marks a significant milestone in Pfeiffer Vacuum's development in
China, as it allows the company to better respond to local customers' needs
while supporting its strategic growth in the local coating and semiconductor
market.
“This is part of our new growth strategy
which includes a global investment program of €150 million”, said Hugh Kelly,
representative of the management board, “In addition to providing after-sales
service, the bigger facility will now also allow for the production of dry pumps
and our new leak detection systems ATC, as well as the assembly of pumping
stations. With the introduction of industry-leading technologies and equipment,
Pfeiffer Vacuum is better poised to react to the needs of local customers.”
At the 2019 annual general meeting, Pfeiffer
Vacuum shared eight strategic pillars of the company, with Eric Taberlet, CEO of
Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology highlighting the importance of the Chinese market to
the company's development. As one of the key cities in the Yangtze River Delta
region, Wuxi has been receiving strong government support to develop its
semiconductor, electronics and solar industry. The expanded facility not only
strengthens Pfeiffer Vacuum's presence in China but also enables closer
proximity to its customers in China as well as the wider Asia market.
Since entering the China market in 2007,
Pfeiffer Vacuum has maintained a steady growth with over 150 employees, largely
part of the country's booming economy as well as strong market demand for
scientific and high-precision vacuum technology. As the inventor of the
turbomolecular pump, Pfeiffer Vacuum has been investing in Research &
Development for nearly 130 years, with an aim to provide cutting-edge solutions
and innovative products to customers and the wider industry.
In support of the vacuum technology industry
in China, Pfeiffer Vacuum has been working closely with top local enterprises,
scientific research institutions as well as other industry partners with its
products and rich expertise. With the new, expanded facility, Pfeiffer Vacuum is
set to deliver more value to local customers and deepen its commitment to the
China market in the future.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel: 847-784-0012; Fax:
847-784-0061
E-mail:
editor@mcilvainecompany.com
Web site:
www.mcilvainecompany.com