Welcome to the Columbia Nano Initiative Nanofabrication Clean Room page!

The cleanroom is open for all processes 24/7 except the corrosives bay, Cl-RIE, and the PECVD which can be used daily between 7am-9pm only.

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The CNI Nanofabrication Clean Room and EBL is a 5,000-sq. ft. facility in the Morris A. Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research (CEPSR) including a satellite Clean Room in the North West Corner building. It is dedicated to providing the processing tools, instrumentation, technical expertise, and a team-teaching environment to support and stimulate collaborative research in nanoscale science and engineering. The facility supports the creation and evaluation of devices and materials with state-of-the-art fabrication and characterization equipment. Applications include nanoelectronic and nanophotonic devices, micro and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), flexible electronics, bio-electronics, nano-bio interfaces, and more.

This laboratory supports multidisciplinary research across many academic departments and disciplines within Columbia University and welcomes researchers from other academic institutions, government laboratories, and industrial organizations ranging from start-ups to large companies. The research bridges the physical, chemical, biological and medical sciences. The laboratory thus represents a strategic capability for Nanoscale Science and Engineering research at Columbia University.

The CNI Nanofabrication Clean Room occupies approximately 5,000 square feet of space. It is built to be class 10,000 to class 1,000 but, effectively, measurements show that it is cleaner. The clean room is divided into seven separate bays, each dedicated to a set of related fabrication processes:

• Photolithography bay: Includes dedicated fume hoods and photoresist spin-coaters, two mask aligners (one for DUV applications), two mask fabrication systems: a manual laser writing (3µm resolution) and an automatic laser writing system with sub-micron resolution, two plasma ashers (oxygen, argon and forming gas) for substrate preparation and stock photo/e-beam resists (list of supplied resists can be found here: Supplied Resists List).

• Wet chemical bay with an automatic RCA-clean bench, spin-rinse dryer for 4" wafers, general acid hood and general base hood for various wet-etch, clean and patterning processes.

• Plasma bay with Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) plasma processing based on chlorine and fluorine chemistries, as well as Deep RIE for high aspect ratio and selectivity etching, and PECVD for silicon oxide, silicon nitride, and amorphous silicon deposition.
  

• Deposition bay includes two sputtering systems (dedicated to metals and dielectrics respectively) that also allow reactive sputtering, an e-beam evaporator, Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) e-beam evaporator, Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), and a thermal evaporator. The list of evaporation materials supplied by the clean room can be found here: Angstrom EvoVac Deposition System and Angstrom UHV E-BEAM Deposition System. The list of sputtering targets can be found here: AJA Orion 8 Dielectric Sputtering and AJA Orion 3 Metal Sputtering.
  

• Microscopy bay consisting of a FEI Nova NanoSEM 450 (with Nabity Pattern Generation System for e-beam writing), Nikon optical microscopes (with bright/dark field and differential interference contrast), optical profilometry and two Filmetrics thin film characterization systems.
  

• Back-end bay consisting of a Disco dicing saw, G&P chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) system, SCS Parylene coating system, Wire bonder, and a Baltec Critical Point Dryer.
  

• E-beam lithography capability (<10 nm resolution) with Nanobeam nB4, located in the North West Corner building.

Download the clean room brochure here: Clean Room Brochure.

Inventory items (wafers, wafer boxes, tweezers, notebooks, tool belts, etc.) are available to purchase from the clean room office for use in the lab. Prices are subjected to change by the actual cost of the inventory items. List can be found here: Inventory List.

Users of the lab are strongly encouraged to acknowledge CNI labs and MRSEC facilities in their publications using this recommended wording:

The authors acknowledge the use of facilities and instrumentation supported by NSF through the Columbia University, Columbia Nano Initiative, and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center DMR-2011738