July 19, 2005 — Giving K-12 students access to computers and later the Internet helped the nation produce a technologically literate generation and a stronger work force. Soon science and engineering educators may get another critical tool that they and their government supporters hope will help students better understand nanotechnology and develop the skills needed to perform nano-related jobs.
The 2006 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives included a $1.5 million grant to the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) to develop a tabletop scanning electron microscope (SEM). The bill now goes to a House-Senate Conference Committee for a final decision.
The project, which also includes a metrology company and a university, is one of several efforts under way to make smaller and more affordable SEMs available for students, teachers and researchers. The cost of a new conventional SEM can be in the six-figure range, and even used equipment can be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
ONAMI director Robert D. “Skip” Rung said smaller, lower-cost electron microscopes can benefit educational institutions and foster the “nanotech literacy” the nation needs to strengthen its high-tech industries.
“Access to nanoscale imaging technology will capture the imagination of a new generation of American students, scientists and technologists the same way rocketry did in the ’50s and ’60s and computing did in the ’70s and ’80s,” Rung said in a statement.
Hillsboro, Ore.-based FEI Co. will join ONAMI and Ohio State University researchers on the project. FEI will contribute $3 million and engineering assistance using its own scanning and transmission electron microscopes over the next three years.
The company is concentrating much of its marketing and research efforts on tools for nanotechnology research and development, in addition to products sold to the semiconductor industry.
Novelx Inc. in the San Francisco Bay area and Zyvex Corp. in Richardson, Texas, also have investigated ways to make smaller SEMs. Novelx originally intended to use MEMS technology to build a miniaturized modular SEM for commercial and defense markets. It put the project on hold to take advantage of another funding opportunity. But the advancements Novelx makes in the second project could help it meet its original goal.
“Our funding has changed, so we’re not building the tabletop scanning electron microscope,” said Lawrence Muray, Novelx chief executive. The company is now working on a lithography device that can be adapted or have a dual use as a tabletop SEM.
“We’re actually building electron beam columns for a maskless lithography system,” he said, adding that these columns are identical to SEM columns. He said that Novelx was close to having a prototype.
Novelx’s funding comes from a $2 million, 18-month contract under a Broad Area Announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop the lithography system. “Ours is attractive because it is small and fast and you can build arrays of them very easily. At the same time, it makes a very good SEM,” Muray said.
Meanwhile, Zyvex, which makes research and development tools, nanomaterials and assembled micromachines, is working with FEI on some of the enabling technology for tabletop microscopes.
“We have a contract to build the electron optics part of an electron microscope,” said Zyvex CEO Jim Von Ehr. “We can put that part in less than a cubic centimeter.” The project is still in the technology development stage.
The company has a family of nano-manipulators that go into SEMs, plus one for a transmission electron microscope that will be much smaller than its current series, but not a tabletop size.