“The heart of the Electron Beam Nanolithography Facility is this beast right here,” said Aju Jugessur, pointing to a machine that can define features as small as ten nanometers—about 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The electron beam lithography tool has pride of place in the new nanotech research lab unveiled on Sept. 16. It is one of only two E-beams of its kind in Canada.

Electron beam lithography is a technique that “writes” custom-designed patterns onto chips, sensors, or other devices. The machine directs a stream of electrons at a specially-prepared material or coating. “Basically this is a printer, but a highly sophisticated one that uses electrons to copy patterns,” said Jugessur, a senior research scientist for the Emerging Communications Technology Institute.

“What makes the tool unique is a combination of things. It can write a small pattern over a relatively large area with very high resolution,” said professor Stewart Aitchison, the engineering faculty’s vice dean of research.

The new lab is meant to recruit top-notch faculty members, train the next generation of researchers, and facilitate commercialization of developments in engineering, science, and medicine.

Operated by the ECTI, it is available to faculty and industrial researchers from all over the province.

Though it officially opened last week, the lab has been operational since January. Since then, about 15 to 20 people have used the electron beam tool, and numbers of projects are underway.

One project, headed by Aitchison, Jugessur, and PhD candidate James Dou, seeks to develop nano-scale sensors to detect and fight viral infections like the recent H1N1 flu. The E-beam will be used to carve out nano- and micro-optical devices onto silicon with very high precision.

Undergraduate students from Jugessur’s engineering class have also had the chance to use the E-beam.

“The aim there is to introduce undergrads to lab techniques, but also provide more hands-on experience with the tool, how to make devices and basic processing. I’m not sure if there is anything quite like it in Canada,” said Aitchison.

It has taken nearly five years to design a controlled environment to store the E-beam, which requires very low mechanical vibration to operate. For this reason, the new lab is located in the basement of the Wallberg building.

“We are working with the building blocks of matter and we are controlling things from their atomic dimensions,” said ECTI director Mo Mojahedi. “We have to be very careful about the environment in which we are doing this.”

The $2 million Clean Room uses an air-handling system to keep the temperature at exactly 21 degrees Celsius. An electromagnetic cancellation system counteracts unwanted waves and particles. Users are required to wear full-body suits to avoid contamination.

The $6.5 million lab was funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ministry of Research and Innovation, and corporate contributions.