[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Duke’s MRSEC Soft Matter Lab contains instrumentation for synthesis of colloids and biopolymers and for characterization of their assemblies. These include capacity for synthesis and purification of recombinant biopolymers, microfluidic production of colloids, high throughput production of nanoparticles. The primary Duke MRSEC research resources are housed in the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS). They include instruments and facilities that enable IRG1, IRG2 and Seed research projects that will be augmented as the Center matures. Instrumentation thus far include an upgraded AFM system, an upgraded contact angle goniometer system, a custom-built surface plasmon resonance system, a tissue culture laboratory, a system for interferometric nanolithography, a facility for expression of recombinant proteins and a temperature programmed multi-well UV/Vis spectroscopy system. The FCIEMAS MRSEC facilities are now fully functional and available to all MRSEC researchers. A secondary MRSEC resource at Duke is located in the French Family Science Center and includes a wire exploder facility consisting of a 20 F, 20 kV capacitor (storing 8,000 Joules) that, when charged and discharged across a metal or semiconducting wire (typically 0.5 mm in diameter, 70 mm in length), causes the wire to vaporize in a matter of microseconds, leaving behind a high yield of nanoparticles. The chemistry of the nanoparticles can be controlled not only by choosing to explode a wire made from a desired material, but also by the chemical content of the explosion medium, which can be either gas or liquid. With this method, tens of grams of nanoparticles of nearly any desired composition and surface chemistry can be generated in an hour. This capability will allow MRSEC researchers to make assemblies of particles containing nearly any desired composition, and at gram-scale quantities. The wire exploder is currently being upgraded with a new capacitor and instrumentation to enable improved monitoring and control of the explosion process, which will in turn enable greater control over particle sizes.

Nanofabrication Facility (NNF) provides users with a broad range of nanofabrication and houses all standard thin film processing tools.

Small Molecule Synthesis Facility provides synthetic organic chemistry capabilities including custom synthesis of linkers, monomers and initiators.

This facility has equipment for both Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), which allows the researcher to form images of thin slices or finely divided powders of samples at a resolution of down to 0.18nm, and for Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), a tool for visualizing the surface of solid samples with a resolution that can approach 1nm. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) allows the researcher to form images of thin slices or finely divided powders of samples at a resolution of down to 0.18nm. Crystal structure may be analyzed by means of electron diffraction, and chemical analysis, with a sensitivity of a few atoms and spatial resolution of about 0.5nm, may be performed by energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) or electron energy-loss analysis (EELS). The Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) visualizes the surface of solid samples, with a resolution (depending on the application) that can approach 1nm. Energy-dispersive X-ray analysis can be used to analyze volumes with dimensions of around 1 micron with a sensitivity of about 0.1wt%, while back-scatter electron imaging allows the visualization of regions of different composition (in many cases). Crystallographic orientation and structure can be examined using backscatter electron diffraction analysis, though sample preparation requirements for this technique are very stringent and limit the number of samples that can be studied in this way.

This facility, housed in a class-100/1000 cleanroom, supports a reasonably complete range of microelectronic processing capabilities. It is run on a user-fee basis, with access to all Brown faculty and outside users, with a couple of local high-tech start-up companies typically maintaining access privileges (requiring insurance and appropriate safety training) with established user fees. In 2009-2010, the facility supported over 100 users from 25 research groups. The facility has a full-time research engineer (Michael Jibitsky) to maintain and upgrade its equipment and train new users, and a faculty director (Rashid Zia).

Current capabilities include:

• -optical lithography down to ~1 μm minimum feature size (Karl Suss 4" mask aligner);
• -optical low-resolution lithography system from Oriel Instruments, capable of using transparency masks and handling large (up to 5")
• -substrates;
• -reactive ion etching in chlorine and fluorine chemistries (Trion and Plasmatherm tools);
• -plasma-enhanced CVD of oxides and nitrides (Plasmatherm 790);
• -ion-beam assisted deposition of dielectric films, including high-reflectivity multilayer dielectric mirrors (Oxford Instruments);
• -wet processing;
• -low-pressure CVD and thermal oxidation furnaces;
• -electron-beam evaporation metallization (Temescal CV-14 and Lesker Lab 18);
• -RF magnetron sputtering (Lab 18); -rapid thermal annealing; -surface profilometry and ellipsometry.