EVG instals in Canada
. The facility was formally inaugurated on November 10, 2003. The site includes an atomic manipulation facility, Canada's largest supercomputer dedicated to modelling and a state-of-the-art micromachining facility.
The cleanroom facility will cater to a wide array of research initiatives spanning physics, chemistry, engineering and the life sciences. Tooling includes a four-chamber dry etch system, several wet process tools, a four-tube furnace stack (oxidation, doping, nitride and polysilicon deposition) and a three-target metal sputtering tool.
Other capabilities include the deposition of self-assembled monolayers via a Langmuir-Blodgett trough, critical point drying and assembly equipment including wire bonding and wafer dicing. Lithography capability will come through a g-line stepper.
Choice of the EVG tools followed a co-operation agreement between McGill and EVG made in October 2002. EVG developed a special handling arrangement for very small and fragile GaAs substrates and equipment that allows quick switching between different substrate sizes and materials.
Among the specific areas of study for the fabricated devices, McGill plans work on single molecule conductivity, sensor arrays for gene sequencing and protein identification, interfaces to living neurons, photonic integrated circuits/optical switches for telecoms and micro-machined high frequency filters for wireless devices.