Centre researchers were instrumental in establishing extensive clean-room facilities at UNSW, which have combined with the NSW Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF-NSW) to provide an open-access facility offering advanced nanofabrication capability across four distinct laboratory areas. ANFF-NSW infrastructure and operations are managed by the ANFF-NSW team of 18 staff, headed by Prof Andrew Dzurak (ANFF-NSW Node Director).
The ANFF-NSW Lower East laboratories comprise 50m2 of ISO5 and 30m2 of ISO7 cleanroom space. The focus in this area in the production of nanoelectronic devices, with key equipment including two FEI/NPGS electron beam lithography systems (one of which is dedicated to Centre projects) that are regularly used to produce sub-20nm device features. Other tools in this area support wet chemical processing, photolithography, metal deposition, metrology and wafer dicing.
The ANFF-NSW Upper East laboratories offer a further 50m2 of ISO5 and 90m2 of ISO7 cleanroom space. This area contains a bank of high temperature furnaces to support core Si MOS processes, specifically: diffusion (p-type and n-type); oxidation (both thick and extremely high quality thin layers); and annealing. In addition, the ISO5 zone has wet chemical processing, photolithography and rapid thermal annealing capability. The ISO7 zone contains a suite of plasma processing tools for the deposition and etching of Si, SiOx, SiNx and other materials.
The ANFF-NSW West laboratories comprise 80m2 of ISO5 and 110m2 of ISO6 cleanroom space. The ISO5 zone contains a bank of four fume cupboards for wet chemical processing as well as photolithography, atomic layer deposition, annealing and metrology tools. A dedicated room within the ISO5 zone houses a Raith 150TWO electron beam lithography system capable of stitch-free high resolution patterning over large device areas. The ISO6 zone contains e-beam evaporators, a multi-target sputtering system, a deep reactive ion etching system, a suite of bonding tools as well as metrology and wet chemical processing capability.
The ANFF-NSW South laboratories, covering 160m2, were opened mid-2014 and house a Veeco molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system for the growth of a range of III-V materials and a Pascal dual chamber laser-MBE system producing a range of complex oxide materials.
The ANFF-NSW laboratories also have extensive plant areas accommodating air handling systems, de-ionised water supply, liquid nitrogen supply, general laboratory gas supplies, vacuum systems, cooling water and exhaust. Toxic and hazardous gases are stored in a rooftop gas enclosure and delivered to the laboratories via the Special Gases System with built-in gas monitoring, automatic safety interlocks and environmental control systems.