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Flexible Cleanroom (FCR)

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Overview

The Flexible Cleanroom is an approximately 2000 square feet class 100 cleanroom facility on the first floor of the Spilker Building in suite 131, supporting photolithography, wet etching, chemical processing, rapid thermal annealing, plasma cleaning, sample preparation, liftoff, chemical etching, thickness measurement, characterization, probing, testing, precision cleaning, optical assembling, delicate assembly work, etc. The lab is flexible in the sense that we work with many odd materials which are generally banned in a rigid CMOS type of facility, and we generally work with smaller chips, crystals, polymers, micro-machined devices, etc. Lab users pay a daily fee when they want to access the lab. The fee is to cover costs such as cleanroom supplies, repairs and maintenance of equipment, gases, chemicals, cleanroom apparel, etc.

The following lists equipment available inside the cleanroom:

Triple Hotplate: This custom triple resist hotplate was designed and built by Tom Carver. It is for baking resist, PMMA, e-beam resist, SU-8, and other spin-on polymers. The precision flat surface is coated with Teflon. The surface temperature is very uniform and accurate. It is not to be used at higher than 220C. The aluminum sheet metal squares shown are for baking polymers which are not easily removed with solvents once baked (SU-8, polyimide, PDMS, etc.).
Standard Operating Procedures

Visiting the Flexible Cleanroom

Current, experienced Flexible Cleanroom labmembers (users who have completed the lab safety tour) can request for permission to bring a visitor (individuals who have not completed the lab safety tour and been granted access to the Flexible Cleanroom) into the cleanroom with them. If permission is granted, the FCR labmember will be responsible for the visitor’s safety and ensure that they follow all SNSF and FCR policies.

Both the visitor and the FCR labmember must jointly fill out the Visitor Request Form. Staff will email both the visitor and the FCR user notifying them on whether or not permission has been granted to the visitor to enter the cleanroom with their FCR labmember escort. It is recommended to submit the form at least a day in advance to allow time for staff to review the request.

Contact Information

Tom Carver
(650) 723-1861 or (650) 725-9183

Getting Started and Training Information

In order to become a qualified user of the Flexible Cleanroom, you need to follow each of these steps in the order as listed here:

  1. Complete the process to become a lab member of SNSF and follow the instructions to activate a Badger account.
  2. Review the following documents:
  3. Watch the Flexible Cleanroom - Lab Tour video.
  4. Review and complete the Flexible Cleanroom User Agreement. (Note: this includes completion of online safety training modules through EH&S.)