Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This proposal seeks to acquire tools which will be added to a core nanofabrication facility at the University of Ottawa. This facility is accessed by several internal and external users to fabricate nanostructures of interest in photonics, microfluidics, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and electronics for applications across varied fields such as biomedical engineering, biophysics, alternative energy, and information and communications technologies. This is the only non-captive accessible nanofabrication facility in Eastern Ontario - its user base, which consists mostly of students and post-doctoral fellows, spans the region, reaching into Montreal. Researchers from several departments within the University of Ottawa, from Carleton and McGill Universities, and from the National Research Council depend on this facility for critical aspects of their work. The facility also supports several international research projects and university-industry research partnerships. This proposal seeks funding to add optical lithography to the capabilities of our nanofabrication facility. To this end, two tools are requested: Item 1 is an optical mask aligner to expose photoresist on a wafer using a mask bearing the features to be transferred. The aligner selected is reliable, cost-effective and ideally-suited to university research, given the tool's flexibility and compactness. The aligner integrates front-side with IR back-side alignment, allowing front-to-back alignments on IR-transmitting wafers such as Si, GaAs and InP wafers. The aligner will allow features as small as 1 ?m to be routinely defined in resist over a full wafer. Item 2 is a plasma cleaning system to clean samples after resist development, ensuring successful subsequent processing and reproducibility. Lithography process development, optimisation and control require frequent iterations, making an optical mask aligner and plasma cleaning system standard tools in fabrication facilities.