Nanofabrication Facility Fees

The CHM Nanofabrication Laboratories, managed by the MassNanoTech Institute, provide a range of material fabrication services to support nanoscale scientific experiments, operating in a clean room located in B-117 Conte and other smaller clean room environments in the Conte building.

ACCESS FEE

For UMass users the Access Fee will be charged as a fiscal year (7/1 to 6/31) annual lump-sum fee of $1200. Other academic groups outside the university will be charged $1500 per year. For non- academic users, the Access Fee will be charged as an annual fee of $2500. The academic access fee includes 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 seven billable processes within the lab: reactive ion etching, PECVD thin film growth, metalization (ebeam evaporator, sputtering), electron beam lithography, and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and the fee for these services is $40/hr for campus and other academic users and $65/hr for industrial users. 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. Deposition of precious metals is at the rate of $50/hr (gold, platinum, palladium).

SPECIAL MATERIALS AND PROCESSES

In addition to the lab’s Equipment Usage Fee, the lab may charge extra for services such as supplying wafers or other materials or preparing photolithographic mask designs.

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/hr for campus and other academic users and $65/hr for industrial users for process work by the Lab Manager or other professional lab technicians employed by the Institute. Training for equipment operations does not incur this fee. Fees are summarized on the following page.