The Meyer Hall 425 Thin Film Deposition Lab contains a clean room and main area with thin film deposition equipment, fume hoods, and various equipment for optical and electronic characterization of films and devices.
The AJA Evaporation Chamber was donated to the REMRSEC by Zettacore, a local start-up company that worked in molecular electronics. It is currently set up to evaporate ionic liquids from crucibles that are heated by halogen lamps. Its substrate holder has rotation, vertical translation, heating to 800 C, and RF or DC bias. The machine has a turbo-pumped load lock and a cryo-pumped main chamber. REMRSEC's intention is to convert this machine into an e-beam evaporator.
The REMRSEC's sputter machine is an Orion-4 purchased from AJA International. It is an "all manual" machine, which reduced its cost and also forces our students to learn more about how the machine actually works so they operate it. It has four 2" sputter guns integrated into its base plate at a fixed tilt. The sputter guns are magnetrons with water cooling and flip-lid style shutters that allow the plasma to be struck and stablilized prior to film deposition.
The Cary 5G spectrophotometer can measure the optical optical properties of thin films, wafers, and solutions in cuvettes. It has a diffuse reflectance accessory (DRA) that allows the accurate measurement of reflectance from samples with rough surfaces.
(Substrate Preparation) A glass cutting board is available that has guides for reliably and accurately cutting glass substrates of a defined size. It has guides for both straight and curved cuts. Rulers, diamond scribes, glass cutting wheels, and glass breaking pliers are stored in the drawer adjacent to the cutting board.
(Substrate Preparation) The UV/Ozone cleaner consists of a drawer in a stainless steel housing. When closed, the drawer holds a substrate beneath a serpentine quartz envelope mercury lamp. The unit is equipped with an exhaust fan that pulls fresh air into the cleaner and exhausts the ozone-containing air into the building's exhaust system. The mercury lamp emits ultraviolet photons (around 253 nm) that both irradiate the substrate and interact with atmospheric oxygen to produce ozone.
The tube furnace can be used to perform anneals in various gas environments. Because of the structure of the furnace, it is possible to heat the furnace to the appropriate temperature, then introduce the sample to be annealed. This allows for quick heating and cooling cycles for the sample.
This system is capable of making sensitive infrared transmission and reflection measurements. Two detectors are available: liquid nitrogen cooled mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) and room temperature deuterated triglycine sulfate (DTGS). Detector choice determines range and sensitivity. Two beam splitters are also available: KBr and quartz.
The Semicore reactive ion etcher was donated to the REMRSEC by Zettacore. It is a highly automated machine with a computerized interface and the ability to store and execute process recipes. It is outfitted with Ar, O2, and SF6 process gases. Its seals are not compatible with chlorine, so chlorine etching chemistries cannot be used.
The Semicore sputter chamber was donated to the REMRSEC by Zettacore. It contains three 2" sputter guns attached to the top of the chamber that sputter downward with variable tilt. The sputter guns are magnetrons with water cooling and slide-away shutters that allow the plasma to be struck and stablilized prior to film deposition. The argon sputter gas enters the chamber through ports integrated into each sputter gun "chimney," allowing the guns to have Ar flow even when the shutters are closed.
This system uses the Nicolet 6700 FT-IR Spectrometer as a source, allowing for FT-IR ellipsometry. The system is capable of measuring psi and delta between 400 cm-1 and 6000 cm-1 using a DTGS detector. Ellipsometry is useful for measuring layer thickness and indexes of refraction for multi-layer systems. Infrared ellipsometry is especially useful accessing layers that may not be transparent in the visible range. This system can also be useful for probing organic materials.
The Tencor P10 profilometer is primarily used for measuring step heights to determine the thickness of deposited films or the depth of etched features. On a smooth, flat sample, it can measure steps as small as 10 nm.
The main lab has three different fume hoods that are avaialble for wet chemical etching. The fume hood at the west end of the lab is specifically set up with temperature contolled baths for RCA cleaning.
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