On September 16, 2009, ECE's Emerging Communications Technology Institute officially opened a state-of-the-art nanotechnology research lab that will allow scientists and engineers to create next-generation devices that could significantly impact healthcare, information technology, clean technologies, digital media, and the automotive industry.
The heart of the new facility is a $6.5 million Electron Beam Lithography system, a tool that can define features as small as 10 nanometres - about 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The facility is one of only two of its kind in Canada, and is open to both academic and industrial researchers across the country. The Electron Beam Nanolithography Facility was built and equipped with contributions from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Ontario's Ministry of Research and Innovation, as well as contributions from numerous industry partners.
Joining ECTI, ECE and University representatives for the event were the Hon. John Milloy, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation and Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities and Dr. Eliot Phillipson, President and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
The opening of this new facility greatly enhances ECE and the University of Toronto's nanotechnology research capacity, a capacity instrumental to the future economical development of Ontario and Canada. The ability to control, pattern, and modify matter at the atomic scale, and the synergies such capabilities engender will greatly enhance Ontario and Canada's standing in numerous fields of engineering, science, and medicine. The facility will foster new collaborations between academia and industry and will enable the university to recruit top-flight
faculty members and train the next generation of highly skilled workers.
Some of the projects already making use of the facility are aiming to develop better detection and sensor technologies. ECE Professors Mo Mojahedi, Stewart Aitchison, and PhD student Muhammad Alam are prototyping and testing a device to efficiently generate and guide a hybrid of light and electron oscillations - called surface plasmons - using an extremely compact setup. Such technology, once fully developed, will have a great impact on applications for health care (cancer detection), information technology (more compact optical and electronic devices), and the aerospace and automotive industries (better and cheaper gas sensors).
To guarantee exceptional performance of the tool, the facility is located in the basement of the Wallberg building, ensuring very low mechanical vibration. The tool is enclosed in an environmental chamber that provides stringent temperature control: the lab temperature is set to 21ºC (plus or minus 0.25ºC) with a maximum rate of variation equal to 0.1ºC per hour. The environmental chamber is certified as a Class 100 cleanroom, which means that the number and size of dust and other particles is greatly reduced, providing a low-contaminant environment for research and device development.
Click this link for details http://www.ecti.utoronto.ca/events/archive.htm#EbeamOpening
(Left to Right) The Honourable John Milloy, Minister of Research and Innovation and Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities; Prof. Paul Young, Vice-President Research, UofT; Dr. Eliot Phillipson, President, Canada Foundation for Innovation; Prof. Mo Mojahedi, Director, ECTI; Prof. Cristina Amon, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, UofT; Prof. Stewart Aitchison, Vice-Dean Research, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, UofT; Prof. Farid Najm, Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UofT.
