Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses)

Tender description

LOT1: The electron beam lithography (EBL) instrument requires both high performance and high reliability. Examples of key research goals include: 1. Patterning novel resists including self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on glass or semiconductor substrates by direct writing onto the SAM with an electron beam. 2. Writing photonic crystals and optical waveguides on III-V semiconductor heterostructures such as GaAs/AlGaAs. 3. Writing leads onto 2D materials such as graphene and InSe. 4. Nano-electronic devices in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. 5. Spintronic devices consisting of thin metal layers deposited by sputtering onto semiconductor devices. 6. Nanomechanical devices made from silicon nitride on silicon. These applications are scientifically challenging and we require an instrument that writes high fidelity patterns with flexible exposure parameters and excellent resolution and overlay capabilities. Tender Lot# 2: Lithography data preparation system Ensuring the maximum throughput of world-leading scientific devices from the lithography tool is very important to us. Therefore it is important that the exposure control of the patterns is calculated correctly. In an ideal world we would hope that the patterns would be exposed correctly first time. This usually means that the resist and substrate need to be modelled in a computer to calculate the proximity correction. This correction might be to the shape of the pattern and/or the exposure of the pattern. As an example consider a ‘bow-tie’ pattern written into a positive electron beam resist on a GaAs substrate consisting of two equilateral triangles of side length 200 nm which are separated at one of their vertices by 20 nm. To provide an accurate spacing of 20 nm and maximum contrast in the resist, the exposure parameters have to be optimised. We are therefore inviting tenders for software tools which will help us maximise the throughput and fidelity of the patterns. We welcome tenders from both electron beam lithography tool suppliers and third parties. Procurement documentation can be accessed from https://www.in-tendhost.co.uk/universityofnottingham/