Research Facilities
In the world of post top down miniaturization, nanowires have become key players in promoting further miniaturization via the bottom up approach, opening a broad and unique opportunity for realization of nano size semiconductor materials for state of the art studies in mesoscopic physics. This MBE lab is devoted to the growth of high aspect ratio III-V nanowires of high purity and high structural quality via the VLS technique.
The Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) Laboratory is the heart of the submicron center. Its purpose is to prepare high purity semiconductor epitaxial layers (such as Gallium Arsenide and Aluminum Gallium Arsenide). Such grown layers form the basis of most semiconductor devices. The MBE system at the submicron center includes two growth chambers in addition to six other for introduction and pre-treatment of the substrates. One growth chamber is designed to produce high purity materials, while the other growth chamber is more versatile and is designed to produce a wider variety of materials and structures.
Processing of state of the art ulta small structures which include submicron active areas, air briges and T- gates produced on III-V materials by Electron beam lithography (EBL). EBL is used for research into the scaling limits of integrated circuits and studies of quantum effects and other novel physics phenomena at very small dimensions.
The scanning electron microscope (SEM) having an extremely high resolution down to 1.5nm is used mostly for evaluation of ultra small electronic and optical devices. The SEM is also an important tool for calibration of the MBE systems and thanks to the very high contrast the layers of a grown structure can easily be resolved by examining the wafer cross-section
Processing systems include Plasma Etching and Plasma Deposition systems to etch vertical walls with minimum damage to lower lying layers, and to deposit insulators such as SiO2 and Si2N3. Ultra high vacuum evaporation systems are used to deposit metal films for Ohmic contacts and various metal gates. Annealing systems are used to activate the Ohmic contacts and allow current transport through the devices
Laser writer is a direct write technique that replaces the conventional mask aligners. The instrument allows to transfer complicated designs to photoresists. The main advantage of the instrument is its flexibility. It is much easier and faster to make design changes as there is no rigid mask. In addition a higher resolution down to 400nm can be achieved with laser writer.
The instrument equipped with 405nm wave length diode laser with max power of 300mW. There are two writing heads available: one for high resolution (400nm) and the second with 1µm resolution but with much higher exposure rate.