Nanofabrication Facility Fees

The CHM Nanofabrication Laboratory, managed by the MassNanoTech Institute, provides a range of material fabrication services to support nanoscale scientific experiments, operating in a clean room located in B-125 Conte and other smaller clean room environments in the Conte building.

ACCESS FEE

For UMass users the Access Fee will be charged as an annual lump-sum fee of $1200. Other academic user groups outside the university will be charged $1500 per year. For non- academic users, the Access Fee will be charged as an annual lump-sum fee of $2500. The access fee will include the monthly user fee for one user. We ask that the minimum rotation period for a user be at least three months.

MONTHLY USER FEE

For UMass users the Monthly User Fee will be $60, for other academic users it will be $75, and for industrial users it will be $95. Mandatory training on safety and general clean room practices will be provided for all users. Individuals who have completed basic training will be “certified” to work in the lab, and their identification will be loaded onto the lab’s card access system and to the online reservation system. This fee will be used to defray lab costs for consumables such as gowning supplies, solvents and chemicals, photolithograhic supplies, and process gases . Additional training on specific equipment or processes can be requested if and when the users need it and that training is also covered by this fee.

EQUIPMENT USAGE FEES

The facility is organized to provide access to specific lithographic, deposition, and other fabrication processes performed in separate chambers within the lab and on separate instruments and/or bench environments. The Equipment Usage Fee is an hourly charge related to the higher associated costs of running process equipment which is available but may not be needed by all users. These costs are incurred at the option of the user. There are currently six billable processes within the lab: reactive ion etching, PECVD thin film growth, metalization (ebeam evaporator, sputtering), electron beam lithography, and electrolytic plating. The fee for these services averages $30/hr and is currently being revised to reflect the differing cost of the materials involved in each process. Some equipment is still in the process of being installed (July 09) and may not yet be available. These fees will be charged process-by-process to the research group/company based on the lab’s online equipment reservation system as documentation for actual time on machines. Users will be billed for reserved time unless a cancellation is made at least one half hour in advance of the reservation time. UV and DUV photolithography exposure tool usage is included in the monthly user fee, as is metrology tool usage and wet chemistry bench access. Some of these processes may still require reservations through our web based calendar system to avoid usage time conflicts.

SPECIAL MATERIALS AND PROCESSES

In addition to the lab’s Equipment Usage Fee, the lab will charge extra for test wafers and for preparing photolithographic masks. The mask prep charges will vary greatly depending on feature size and cell density. Precious materials supplied by the CHM may result in a $50 surcharge.

PRECIOUS METAL SURCHARGE

The lab may assess a surcharge for precious metals such as gold that exceed a certain basic allowance for typical lab work .

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

The lab will charge $40.00 per hour for technical consultation and/or custom process set-up by the Lab Manager or other professional lab technicians employed by the Institute. Training on equipment operation is not charged this fee.