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Birck Nanotechnology Center (Purdue)
Birck Nanotechnology Center (BNC) is an interdisciplinary research facility in Discovery Park at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus in the state of Indiana, U.S.A. Dedicated on October 8, 2005, the 187,000-square-foot (17,400 m2) research facility is one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world. It is designed to support interdisciplinary research in nanotechnology, with six major thrust areas supported by seven areas of enabling technology.

The infrastructure provided by the center is available throughout Purdue, to other universities, and to outside companies of all sizes. Collaboration between disparate disciplines – sharing equipment and knowledge – is the heart of the center. Over 160 faculty representing 25 academic departments are affiliated with the center, and 420 users – faculty, students, post docs, visiting scholars, etc. – from 117 different research groups use BNC.

History
The concept for the center was developed in the late 1990s by a team led by Richard Schwartz, James Cooper, David Janes, and George Adams from Purdue’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. These visionaries expanded the scope of the project far beyond departmental boundaries, encompassing a core group from a variety of engineering and science disciplines. Incoming Purdue President Martin Jischke endorsed the project and made BNC the centerpiece of his new creation – Discovery Park. Planning began in earnest with key donations from Michael Birck and Donald Scifres, along with Kevin Hall, William Elmore, and the Eli Lily Foundation. In 2000, Delphi Corporation loaned John Weaver, an expert in cleanroom design and construction, to Purdue to lead the design and construction effort. Architectural and Engineering firm HDR was hired to design the facility in 2001, and Pepper Construction was awarded the bid to build the facility in 2003. The facility was dedicated on October 8, 2005, and the installation of 183 major pieces of equipment began in September. With the equipment installation complete, the facility was dubbed “fully functional” in August of 2006.

At that point, research was already underway in the facility. Founding Co-Directors Richard Schwartz and James Cooper led the facility through its design, startup, and operation, and Timothy Sands took the reins in 2006. After Sands became Purdue’s Provost in 2010, James Cooper returned as Interim Director until Ali Shakouri took charge in 2011. In 2014, Dimitrios Peroulis assumed the role of Deputy Director.

Facility


The BNC facility comprises the largest and cleanest university cleanroom in the United States, a large laboratory area, offices for faculty and researchers, as well as conference rooms and public spaces. Designed with collaboration in mind, the use of glass is maximized throughout the facility and various design features encourage interdisciplinary gatherings.

The nanofabrication cleanroom consists of 25,000 sq. ft. of bay-chase cleanroom, with 45% of the bays operating at ISO 3 (Class 1), 40% operating at ISO 4 (Class 10), and the remaining 15% operating at ISO 5 (Class 100). The three-level structure consists of a full subfab, the cleanroom level, and an air-handling level above the cleanroom. A perforated raised floor ensures unidirectional airflow and bulkhead-mounted equipment separates operational functions from maintenance functions. A combination of careful control of the airflow path, multiple stages of filtration, careful choice of materials, and non-ionic-steam humidification ensure the control of both particulate and molecular contamination. A very tight waffle slab provides NIST A vibration rating, approximating quiet, slab-on-grade construction.

In addition to the cleanroom, the BNC includes a 22,500 ft2 suite of specialized laboratories that provide outstanding capabilities to researchers. All BNC laboratories are designed for low acoustic noise, less than 1 milligauss EMI, and +/- 1°C temperature stability. Additionally, the first-floor laboratories achieve NIST A vibration rating. From this base, certain laboratories have been modified to provide even more stringent limits to accommodate specialized needs. For example, the TEM laboratory has tighter temperature controls, specialized airflow patterns, and special acoustic materials on the walls and floors. For highly sensitive functions, the Kevin G. Hall Nanometrology Laboratory provides enhanced control of temperature, vibration, acoustic noise, and EMI. Temperature is controlled to +/- 0.01°C, EMI is controlled to less than 0.1 milligauss, acoustic noise is within NC-35 criteria, and vibration is controlled to NIST A-1 criteria.

Flexibility is a hallmark of the facility. Laboratories are designed such that equipment can be readily rearranged and the laboratory can be easily repurposed depending on needs. Utilities are supplied in a manner that allows them to be added or subtracted from the equipment connections and laboratory services. This flexibility dovetails with the operational model of fluid laboratory assignment – as a research area declines the associated equipment can be moved out and replaced with equipment to support a new initiative.

Operations
The strength of BNC is in its collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to research. Purdue’s College of Engineering, College of Science, College of Pharmacy, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Health and Human Sciences, College of Agriculture, and College of Technology are all users of BNC, as well as other universities and corporations. Many synergies result from this diversity, allowing the BNC to address societal-scale challenges and opportunities in healthcare, information access, energy, and the environment. As a shared, open-access facility with a sustainable financial model, costs are shared among users with a “cost by cost causers” model. Using a zero-margin approach, supplemented by a university subsidy, operational costs are equably shared among the users of the facility. This minimizes research costs and drives the efficient operation of the facility.

The facility operates under a fluid operational model. Unlike traditional university operations, there is no ownership of labs and equipment – everything is shared. Laboratories are assigned to technologies, not to individual faculty. For example, BNC has an atomic-force microscopy (AFM) laboratory that is shared by four faculty. These faculty also work in other laboratories in the facility with other equipment. This maximizes the efficiency of research by limiting the number of tools and instruments that are needed. It also fosters collaboration with researchers working together in the same laboratory – often on the same instrument or similar instruments.

The BNC has a very significant equipment set for both fabrication and characterization functions. With lithography capabilities down to 6 nanometers and deep reactive-ion etching aspect ratios at 20:1, very small geometries are possible. 24 different metals can be deposited through both evaporation and sputtering, and a wide variety of dielectric films can be deposited by various methods including Atomic Layer Deposition. An environmental transmission electron microscope provides near-proton-level resolution and a wide variety of high-precision instrumentation allows both physical and electrical characterization.

The BNC staff is highly experienced, with over 500 combined years of relevant experience. They provide support to both internal and external users in the form of training on equipment usage, assisting in the development of processes, characterizing processes on the equipment, and keeping the equipment operational. An additional service performed by the staff is process development and processing for users who do not use the BNC in person, mostly external users.

Research
BNC is committed to a Discovery with Delivery approach to research. This means that it is critical to get new inventions into the marketplace as efficiently as possible. Using a “pull system,” they focus many of their research efforts toward solving global problems that require action and invention. Additionally, the BNC teams with the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship in Discovery Park, and provides incubator space in the BNC to facilitate the transition to manufacturing.

The BNC has six thrust areas in nanotechnology, more than most facilities of this type. These areas of concentration are: nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, energy conversion, RF MEMS, sensors, actuators, nano-bio (including 3D cell culture and label-free imaging), and nanomanufacturing. Newly developed roll-to-roll printing tools for smart-drug delivery – the integration of pharmaceutical materials and flexible electronics – and high-volume production of energy-storage devices are new areas of concentration in the Center.

These thrust areas are supported by strong enabling technologies, including device fabrication, surface analysis, growth and deposition (nanowires, graphene, nanotubes, ALD), microscopy (TEM, SEM, AFM, FIB), materials, and molecular beam epitaxy.